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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap., .., Copyright No.. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



INSPIRATION 



Considered as a Trend 



D. W. FAUNCE, D. D. 
Author of "Hours with a Sceptic " 







PHILADELPHIA 

AMERICAN baptist PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

1896 



\ 






Copyright 1896 by the 
American Baptist Puplication Society 



jfrom tbe Socfets's own ipvess 



De&icateO 

TO 

Rkv. w. h. p. faunce, d. d. 

MY SON IN THE FI.KSH 

IN THE SPIRIT 

AND IN THE MINISTRY OF THE GOSPEIv 



PREFATORY NOTE 



In his former volume entitled, ^' Prayer as a 
Theory and a Fact," the '' Fletcher Prize Essay," 
the author of this book attempted to show that 
prayer involves two persons, God and man. The 
various lines of proof for the Divine existence were 
briefly named. They all show direction rather 
than attainment. It was said, ^* These various ways 
of seizing upon the idea of God are by no means 
exclusive of each other. They are methods suited 
to unlike minds. But there are minds so consti- 
tuted that an unmistakable trend is more convinc- 
ing than the sight of the ultimate goal. Enclosed 
in a circular box that men call a compass, is a deli- 
cate needle which, however you disturb it, trembles 
back to its pole. And it does this because all over 
the earth run unseen magnetic currents converging 
toward an unseen magnetic center far away in 
the north. Men sail on every ocean of the world 
and measure their land on every continent of the 
globe by that trend of the magnetic currents 
toward the pole. But no mortal foot ever touched 
that pole, no mortal eye ever saw it. It is the 
world over only a trend. And not only the earth 
beneath, but the wide heavens above us, are mapped 
off in lines of gigantic boundary by the steady 
trend toward a pole no man ever saw or touched. 

5 



PREFATORY NOTE 



The trend toward God in all forms of human 
thought is just as distinct." 

This volume aims to carry out and newly apply 
the thought of trend as there expressed. The 
form of argument used there for the Divine exist- 
ence is used here for the Divine inspiration. It is 
insisted that trend, the strongest proof in the 
one case, is the strongest proof in the other. 
What if the method God intended us to use in 
proving his own being and his own revelation is 
one.? So too, it may be that the trend in the 
various theories of inspiration proposed by devout 
students of the Bible and that shown by the Bible 
itself, deserve notice. No new theory is here pro- 
posed ; but the theories devoutly held and the facts 
declared and involved in the Scriptures and con- 
firmed in the Christian experience, are passed in 
brief review — to find in them all an unmistakable 
trend. 

So broad a subject as this of inspiration will 
present itself to men under various aspects. It 
can be studied in manifold relations. It may be 
considered as an inbreathing with reference to its 
source, or as an impulse with reference to its 
power. It may be considered as a process with 
reference to its method, or as a product with ref- 
erence to its results as found in a book. Only 
one of the many ways of considering the subject is 
here undertaken — that of trend. Hence the title, 
" Inspiration Considered as a Trend." 

It is to be remembered that '' trend," like all our 
mental and moral terms, was primarily used in a 
physical sense. It is now used to signify the 

6 



PREFATORY NOTE 



tendency that makes for an end and also for the 
potency that gains it. The *^ magnetic trend " in 
physics is a term employed not only to describe a 
tendency, but to define a force attaining constantly 
a definite end. Used in political, in literary, in 
historical, and in moral statement, it declares not 
only developmental direction, but achieved potency 
covering alike process and result. 

Nor let any man think that the idea of trend 
reduces inspiration to its lowest terms. Trends 
do indeed differ in intensity. But the accumula- 
tion of facts which show the potency of this 
trend, raises the certainty and the character of this 
method of proof above that of any one theory or of 
all theories, and so lifts it into the highest possible 
position. 

If the satisfaction gained by a fresh study of 
this view of inspiration shall equal, in the mind of 
any reader, that enjoyed by the writer of these 
pages in their preparation, he will be abundantly 
rewarded. 

D. W. F. 

Pawtucket, R. I. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

THE SUBJECT STATED 

Section I. The Questions Involved, 13 

Importance of the subject. Duty of investigation and 
decision. The burden of proof. The men who accept 
the Book as inspired. The interests at stake. Defi- 
niteness or indefiniteness of behef and conviction. 
The *' burning question." 

Section II. The Recognition of Trend, 30 

Differing theories. Each may help. No one of them 
held in absolute consistency. All shovir a trend. The 
trend the chief thing. The methods to be used in 
seeking the trend. 

CHAPTER II 

THE GATHERED MATERIAL 

Section I. Our Natural Intuitions, 42 

Limitations of the inductive method. New Testament 
basis may be questioned. Old Testament also. Going 
back to our *' original intuitions." They all demand 
a Bible. I. Liable to be overlooked. 2. Corrobo- 
rated by other evidence. 3. Trustworthy as far as 
they go. 4. Liable to misuse. 5. Are roused by the 
Christian facts. 6. Consistent with each other. 7. 
All prophetic and not final. 8. All endorsed, puri- 
fied, liberated, by the Bible. 9. Which to do this 

9 



CONTENTS 



must be inspired of God. lo. Both they and the 
Bible disclose a common trend. 

Section II. Our Actual Bible, 71 

I. Is a growth. 2. Its method historical and biographi- 
cal. 3. Its Old Testament calls for the New Testa- 
ment. 4. Its New Testament is to be read into the 
Old. 5. Christ's use of the Old Testament. 6. The 
vital thought that makes the Bible one unique book. 
7. Everywhere the trend. 

CHAPTER III 

THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 

Section I. The Contents of the Christian Experi- 
ence, 114 

I. This experience a fact. 2. It is co-ordinated with 
biblical facts. 3. Its worth as an argument for inspira- 
tion. 4. Its evidence as a supplementary fact. 

Section II. The Worth of this Experience as an Ar- 
gument, 123 

I. Its weight with those not Christians. 2. May not 
alone satisfy investigators. 3. Subordination of spir- 
itual to intellectual method. 4. The biblical redac- 
tors. 

Section III. Christian Experience as a Safeguard, 131 

I. The *' inward blessing" and the written word. 2. A 
saving restraint. 

Section IV. What is Involved in the Christian Ex- 
perience, 135 

I. In it a demand for inspiration as a fit thing. 2. As 
an expected thing. 3. As an authoritative thing. 4. 
As a satisfactory thing. 5. The testimony is unique 
and universal in each of these respects. 

10 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 

Section I. What we are Warranted to Expect, . . 150 
I. As to an inspiring Spirit. His testimony to inspiration. 

Section II. The Character of Men, 153 

I. The testimony of the men he inspires as to their own 
inspiration. Their testimony to the inspiration of other 
inspired men. 2. Our Lord's testimony. His promise 
and the claimed fulfillment. 

Section III. The General Course of Development, . 166 
I. Development of the inspired facts and their record. 

CHAPTER V 

THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

Section I. The Human Element, 175 

I. The personality of the writers. 2. The signs show- 
ing the time when they wrote. 3. This element not 
disquieting, but assuring. 4. Human element neces- 
sary in order to the divine. 5. Human element a 
strength and not a weakness. 6. Everywhere the 
trend. 

Section II. The Divine Element, 190 

I. Divine record of ordinary things. 2. Of extraordi- 
nary things. 3. Divine selection of fit men to inspire. 
4. Peculiar prophetic inspiration needed. 5. Parallel 
divine and human trend. 

CHAPTER VI 
difficulties and confirmations 

Section I. Anthropomorphism, 206 

ij 



CONTENTS 

Section II. Chronology, 208 

Section III. Various Readings, 216 

Section IV. Unintelligibleness, 218 

Section V. Unfulfilled Prophecy, 219 

Section VI. Discrepancy of View, 230 

Section VII. Topographical Discrepancies, .... 233 

Section VIII. Alleged Savagery, . 239 

Section IX. Continuous Revelation, 242 



12 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 



CHAPTER I 

THE SUBJECT STATED 

Here is a book called ''The Bible/' For it a 
very peculiar claim is entered. It is held by some 
that its statements, not only of 
ordinary but of extraordinary mi, n +• 
facts, have a degree, more or ^^^ auestions 
1 ' 1 ^ f J- • Involved 

less complete, oi divme sanc- 
tion and inspiration. If, indeed, God has had to 
do with this book as with no other, that fact is 
of the utmost importance. To make such a claim 
if unwarranted is a terrible mistake — a mistake only 
equalled by the rejection of the claim if the book 
is really inspired of God. On this claim, since it 
comes to every man living in a Christian land, some 
decision is to be made. Every man has a very 
serious responsibility, not only for doing something 
about this claim, but for doing it wisely and rightly. 
If, indeed, this book had received as yet but little 
attention, it were another thing. If it were an ob- 
scure publication, by writers little known in any 
age of the world, one might with some show of 
reason wait for a time. If it had made no mark on 
any generation, one in a busy world might perhaps 

13 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

hold himself in some suspense about examining it. 
But here is a book so remarkable that foremost 
minds have devoted long years to its critical study, 
and have come to see that it so far exceeds as to 
supersede other books on its peculiar theme. It has 
swayed the best men. It has met deep perplex- 
ities. It has awakened sublime aspirations. It has 
inspired useful lives. It has assuaged human sor- 
rows. It has kindled strongest hopes. It has 
made men brave and women pure. 

Nor has it done these things alone for any one 
class of mankind. True, it is the peculiar heri- 
tage of a great number of thoughtful, devout, and 
scholarly men, who have brought to it disciplined 
minds, accurate habits of investigation, and the 
best culture of the schools. But it has had an 
immense hold, as well, upon the millions of those 
strong, stalwart middle-class men ; those men who 
with clear heads are not likely to be, on any large 
scale, for any considerable time, very wrong in 
their better judgments ; those men who are the 
best class when arrayed as a jury for deciding upon 
evidence submitted to them ; the class which has 
been foremost in prosecuting moral reforms and 
producing the great moral leaders of mankind. 
These men never would have taken up this book 
had they not believed that in some sense or other 
God has had to do with it as with no other book. 
These men have held it to be in some way a di- 
vinely inspired volume. Such a profound convic- 
tion, while not a decisive evidence, warrants us in 
demanding for this claim at least a fair degree of 
attention. 

14 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



Under these circumstances, the burden of proof 
for the rejection of this claim clearly lies with its 
opponents. For here is the book. It exists. 
Somebody wrote it. Its existence is a fact in lit- 
erature to be explained on some reasonable theory 
before it can reasonably be rejected. Its influence 
as well as its existence is a thing for which one is 
bound to give some account if the book is to be 
discarded. One must work logically in any process 
of denial and rejection. The book has had such 
a prodigious influence on the world that no man 
may regard it as a foolish volume. In it is a 
potency of some kind. It is the most widely 
printed and largely read book upon the planet to- 
day. What is it that makes it the most living book 
in human thought, gathering millions every seventh 
day to study its contents, to hear its exposition, 
and to learn by one day's teachings how to live on 
all the other days of the week ? Has any other 
book such vital force ? What is it that gives it 
such hold on the best portions of the human race ? 

These men all believe that, in some sense, in 
some way, divine authority attaches to the Bible. 
This does not prove its unique claim. But it shows 
that, if a man is to decline to accept the book, he 
must do so for some good logical reason given only 
after examination of the book itself, and after 
carefully weighing these claims made for it by this 
great body of men. These men who receive it, 
many of them, are prayerful men. They believe 
in God. They have moral as well as intellectual 
standards of measurement. They are wont to de- 
cide questions involving morals, in part at least, by 

15 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

a spiritual instinct. They have a sharpened spir- 
itual appetite and they know bread from stone. 
They do not gather grapes from thorns. 

With these men one should differ with great 
hesitation on a question of such importance. The 
strong probabilities are in favor of a true spiritual 
trend in the course they take on this matter. Their 
conviction should be given due weight. In exam- 
ining this question of an inspired volume, we 
should act not only with reference to good men, 
but also as in the presence of God. If it be not 
true that these claims can be substantiated, there 
is still left us a belief that God is, and that most 
likely he is the answerer of prayer. And the wis- 
dom that is necessary he can impart. There can 
be no matter over which one should spend himself 
in more urgent and agonizing supplication than 
over doubts which may come in about a divine 
revelation to man. Only after earnest prayer for 
the Enlightening Spirit can a man reasonably re- 
ject such a book as the Bible. For the deepest 
moral instincts and the most fundamental convic- 
tions of the human heart as they are stirred within 
us are to have a voice in deciding upon these 
claims. Our whole complex selfhood is to be con- 
sulted. Our very fears are to come into play. It 
would be the saddest of all sad things if it should 
turn out that the book we have received as from 
God is, after all, only a fortuitous assemblage of 
myths ; a series of mistakes gathered about a mis- 
take. And we should be even worse off if the 
book should turn out to be a composite of part 
fable and part fact. In that case it would be worse 

i6 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



for US than if it were a cheat ; for a cheat de- 
tected can be dismissed. But a book that should 
mix miracle with myth and fiction with fact would 
furnish the worst of perplexities to honest souls. 
Better no guide than one who does not know the 
way. Our own doubts are enough without his. If 
reduced to guessing, we can do our own. But it 
would, indeed, be a thing to say in tearful tones, 
that this book after all may mislead. All that is 
best in humanity would be forced into mourning, 
and all that is worst would inevitably receive im- 
petus from such a decision. A vast deal is at 
stake. We shall have lost not only faith in the 
book as from God, but faith in humanity. Its fair- 
est and best portion, its men whose moral instincts 
are the highest, who are most tender and reverent 
in their inquiries are, in that case, wrong. They 
are not simply wrong on one point, but vitally 
wrong in their most earnest religious convictions. 
The wrong pulsates in every heart-beat and passes 
through every artery and vein of the moral 
nature. These men have believed that the book 
differs in kind and in authority from all other 
books. They take its texts as the proof of doc- 
trine and as the law of the Christian life ; and 
without always expressly defining what they mean 
by inspiration, they consciously or unconsciously 
give the book substantially the homage due to the 
claim. If they are wrong, not only is it a rejec- 
tion of a book to which they must no longer give 
their respect and reverence, but the damage to all 
their best ideals of human nature is something 
immense. The best men in the line of the best 
B 17 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

things are deceived. Humanity at its highest is 
the sport of accident, the victim of mistake ; pos- 
sibly, also, of imposture. It may be said that the 
scientific method is careless of results if it can only 
discover the truth. But can any man afford, in 
deciding what is the truth, to refuse care about the 
results ? By the fruit, in part at least, we know 
the tree. 

Nor is this all. If there has been given to us 
a revelation from God we owe him a duty there- 
for. We are, if this book is really a Divine rev- 
elation, not only striking a blow at humanity by 
its rejection, but we are doing a great wrong to 
God. A mistake here is a sin. The wrong to him, 
on the one hand, of receiving what he has not 
given, can be matched only by the other wrong of 
rejecting what he has actually inspired. Anyway, 
there is vast responsibility for doing either the one 
or the other. 

It may be urged that many plain Christians 
have never been over the whole ground of the evi- 
dence for believing the Bible to be inspired of 
God. But do they need to do so ? They have a 
kind of growing proof which comes from acting 
upon the belief. They will not be obliged to give 
up what they have discovered of its value and 
potency in order to be fair in their dealing with it. 
They must not be required to begin de novo, as if 
the book were not true, and then start to prove it 
to be from God. In mathematics, is a man to be 
asked to empty himself of all his knowledge 
gained by forty years' use of the multiplication 
table ? He began in childhood by learning it as an 

i8 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



exercise of memory. He assumed it to be correct. 
And for all these forty years, in daily use of it, he 
never found it to fail ot being true. Here comes 
a man and expresses a doubt about its accuracy. 
There have been men who made this challenge. 
They have bidden this accountant give up forty 
years of experience and prove that two and two 
make four! He will do nothing of the sort. The 
one to produce evidence is the objector, not the 
believer in the multiplication table. He has em- 
ployed it in his work every day, and in the most 
practical of all ways, that of experimental use, he 
has found it trustworthy. He now stands by his 
proved work. He has amassed proofs. He is 
sure about that multiplication table. It would be 
strangely unfair to himself, to his science, to' all 
the interests involved, for him to start by surren- 
dering his well-founded conviction. Let the ob- 
jector start with doubt. Let him enter on his 
proofs de novOy if he has any to offer. The burden 
is clearly on his shoulders. The man who has 
studied the book and practised its precepts and 
yielded himself to its spirit is certain that it is 
like no other book. He may have little analytical 
power. Into discussions about the degree, kind, 
method, of divine influence exerted on the writers, 
he may or may not enter. But exactly in propor- 
tion to his spiritual experience of the unique power 
of the book will be his regard for it, and his be- 
lief that God has had to do with it as with no 
other book. In such cases we may admit a predis- 
position like that of a mathematician for his 
science. The mathematician would claim that 

19 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

thereby he was not the worse but the better judge 
of a mathematical problem. There are many side 
questions appealing to the reason. But the main 
appeal of the Bible is to the spiritual and moral 
nature. And therefore the moral and spiritual 
man is the better fitted for a just decision. When 
experience in mathematical science is a bar to fair 
judgment in case of a volume on mathematics, 
then a long and strong religious experience may be 
considered a hindrance to the examination of a 
volume on morals and religion like the Bible. A 
sympathetic interest in its object and its methods, 
as well as a knowledge of its whole scope, is 
needed. There is to be exercised, not so much on 
single texts as upon the great comprehensive idea 
of the book, the most careful moral as well as 
intellectual judgment before a man can honestly 
reject the claim of its inspiration. 

Perhaps it will be found that there are vastly 
more difficulties in discarding its true and proper 
inspiration than in accepting the simplest solution 
that is possible, viz., that it is God's book through 
man and for man. Perhaps the knowledge of the 
great controlling thought of the book may make it 
easier to believe that God had to do with it than 
that it is merely a product even of the most 
exalted human genius. We may find that all our 
ways of accounting for it are needed in their grand 
sum. This is what many think. If they are 
right, it is a great truth on which they have fallen. 
If they are wrong, it is a great mistake they have 
made. Either way, the decision is of immense 
importance. 

20 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



This importance attaching to a decision in 
either direction is at once obvious from the inevi- 
table results. Let it be true that the book is not 
inspired by God, but only by human genius how- 
ever exalted, and certain inferences cannot but be 
drawn from the fact. Let it be true that the 
Hebrew race, foremost and purest in all ethical 
and spiritual ideas, have in this book presented 
the world with a literature chiefly religious, but 
standing on a basis, so far as authority is con- 
cerned, that is only human — not otherwise in- 
spired than are all human productions save in 
degree — and there are direct inferences of a sort 
wholly different from those warranted by a belief 
that it has both human and divine inspiration. Let 
the Old Testament come to be regarded as only a 
collection of annals, songs, prophecies, and prov- 
erbs, having indeed far greater value than those 
of surrounding nations, but with no special and 
peculiar endorsement of God, then it has no other 
and higher authority than that always accorded to 
human productions of great worth. It is of man 
only, precisely as all other books are of man only. 
Every man feels the debasement of authority, the 
lowering of tone, the prodigious difference of 
the conception. The view narrows rather than 
broadens. For no view can be so broad, so 
strong, so lofty, so sustained as that which finds 
in this book a sanction, a superintendence, an in- 
breathing not accorded to any other. Let the 
Old Testament be regarded as merely an out- 
growth of human development, and it still has 
religious value ; but we must take this currency 

21 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

at a fearful discount. Its characters, "real or 
imaginary," will still serve the intellectual world 
"to point a moral and adorn a tale." The words 
of Scripture can still be gracefully quoted to 
round out a period. They can be a happy classical 
allusion. The old-time Hebrews can serve us in 
literary work as do the old-time heroes of the 
Grecian story. They can be used to illustrate any 
exalted idea we have ourselves originated. We can 
quote from the Old Testament exactly as from the 
Koran — when it is an endorsement of our own 
belief. It will be among the sheaves that do 
obeisance to the one of our own binding. But 
authority is gone from any declaration it may con- 
tain. Indeed, we judge it by the standard of our 
own ideas, approving or condemning as it favors 
or does not favor our own conclusions. It would 
be claimed by some who would dispense with any 
special divine authority, to be a matter of com- 
paratively little importance whether Abraham or 
Moses, whether Elijah or David ever really ex- 
isted. It would be claimed that the moral impres- 
sion is just the same on the world whether they 
did or did not live. 

And yet it is only fair to say that some men 
holding very lightly by the inspiration of Scripture, 
do not go to this length, but claim that at least 
the historical accuracy of the Old Testament must 
be preserved. For they see that these lives and 
these acts of the old Hebrew worthies are a 
long series of preparatory events, and that any 
denial of them spoils the cumulative moral im- 
pression of the series, and that thus the most 

22 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



important part of the moral influence would be 
lost. For it is not alone in the individuality of 
the lives in which these grand heroes set forth 
some virtue that they are worth most to the 
world, but because they are as links of a chain, 
stones of an arch, lines of a figure, parts of a 
whole. 

Nor is this all. Take any one individual with 
his characteristic work out of the series for a 
moment, that you may hold up that man as an 
object-lesson and his work as an example, and it 
does make a vast difference to the impression 
whether the person described as doing the work 
is fictitious or real, and whether his alleged deeds 
are fancies or are facts. The Hegelian method 
of treating history was the '^ impressionist fashion." 
The fact was held to be of little worth. The im- 
portant thing was the impression on the minds of 
succeeding generations. It was asked why we 
might not ignore the biblical facts, but retain the 
principle involved in them. Maurice himself, 
touched by the Hegelian phase of thinking, when 
writing to his son who had asked him *' whether a 
legend which appealed to conscience might not 
produce the same good results as an actual fact," 
was obliged to answer in the negative. '' For," 
said he, ^^if God reveals his ideas to us, the reve- 
lation must be through facts." " I believe," he 
continues, *^that all is good just so far as it tests 
facts ; and all is bad and immoral which introduces 
the notion that it signifies little whether they turn 
out to be facts or no." If it shall turn out that 
there are conceptions of facts and classes of events 

23 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

which need inspiration for any fair record of them, 
then the doctrine of a divine inspiration could not 
be dismissed from the Old Testament without loss 
both of the facts and of their moral impression. 

If we come to the New Testament with our 
doubts about inspiration, the results are even more 
obvious. Let it once be held that the Gospels are 
accidental narratives, taking their shape and pre- 
senting their contents as casual fragments ; that 
the Epistles are old letters which by chance have 
escaped oblivion, and so are valuable only as show- 
ing an individual phase of passing religious thought, 
and the book ceases to have any considerable au- 
thority. And doctrine, held on the strength of its 
statements, must be held loosely and tentatively. 
Merely human thought never cuts the same circle 
twice in a century. Its circumference has no 
more a fixed point than has its changing center. 
There cannot consistently be any faith save faith 
in change. There is no steadiness save that of a 
steady flux in belief. The natural religious in- 
stincts are all that remain for guidance ; and God 
himself could make no supernatural revelation that 
we should be warranted in believing. We have 
estopped certainty by questioning the best certi- 
fied Christian facts and doctrines which we can 
imagine to be given. The lack of inspiration in 
the New Testament makes what little of it remains 
to us more perplexing than if it had never been 
written. For it raises more questions than it 
solves, and the sifting of probabilities becomes a 
new and a confusing labor. And yet, if the book 
is not supernaturally inspired, we must undertake 

24 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



to thread this labyrinth, pitied by others, and most 
of all pitying ourselves in our doubtful work. It 
will not be wise to assert very strongly any truth 
of religion ; since the only basis is our own falli- 
bility, and there is no ascertainable standard that 
is not liable to be altered by our own personality. 

But if the opposite of all this is true, there is a 
new bright world flooded for us by perpetual sun- 
shine. If the book is sanctioned and directed and 
inbreathed of God, if the human authors of the 
book in their highest human inspiration were 
touched and illuminated by a peculiar divine in- 
spiration, then there dawns upon us the happy 
possibility of having some good degree of definite- 
ness in our religious beliefs. That fact fixed, our 
search for truth in religion is immensely simplified. 
We still use our best native powers, but they are 
working in a new atmosphere, to new advantage, 
and toward moral certainty as the assured result. 

Our inquiry then, is narrowed to these two ques- 
tions, viz, .-Is the text of Scripture fairly preserved, 
and what does the text mean 1 Reason still has a 
place, but it is a buttress to the structure built 
upon the foundation of a divinely authenticated 
revelation. The moral instincts are still of value. 
For they are roused into highest activity by the 
truth and the Spirit of God. But the sovereign 
judge from whose decision there is no appeal will 
be this Bible. A multitude of things can now be 
held very firmly. Not that they are altogether 
understood. A man's lack of understanding as to 
how a thing can be so is now seen to be no bar to 
believing, on the authority of the Bible, that it is 

25 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

SO. And thus a man's creed that had been very 
short and hazy and vacillating while he doubted an 
inspired Bible, becomes very long and broad, very 
deep and high, very sure and satisfying, since it 
has for its authority the inspiration of Holy Scrip- 
ture. Apart from such authority it is almost pre- 
sumptuous to hold many a thing which is tradi- 
tionally received even by those who doubt or deny 
this supernatural guidance. But the book accepted, 
to hold less than the large, full, confident truth 
would be a wrong to God and to one's own self. 
Fullness of belief, strength of conviction, and the 
irrevocable yielding of one's intellectual and moral 
nature to the sway of great Christian facts and 
doctrines will be secured only in the presence of 
divine inspiration. In the actual conflict with 
error the Christian who will do most efficient work 
is he who wields, with strong heart and steady 
head and practised hand, ^^ the sword of the Spirit 
which is the word of God." There will be a 
decisiveness about the blows he strikes and an 
assurance that one fights in a winning cause. 

And yet, on the other hand, there are devout 
and scholarly men who claim that much of the 
prevalent unbelief in the Bible would be at once 
given up if young men of culture who come to 
the study of the Bible were met by a less formal 
demand for the belief in its inspiration. The claim 
is that the popular prejudice against the book on 
account of its miraculous incidents, on account of 
its alleged discrepancies and its undeniable diffi- 
culties, would disappear if this claim of its Divine 
inspiration were modified. It would be possible 

26 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



to gain the assent of men who are not yet spirit- 
ually minded, but who mean to be intellectually 
honest toward the book. As yet they are hindered 
from believing its religious truths because obliged 
also to assent to a large number of statements 
against which they are now rebellious. Afterward, 
when these men have begun on the moral side of 
religious inquiry, it is thought they may come to 
accept statements which are now full of perplexity 
to them. Some Christian men, loving the Bible 
themselves but in close sympathy with many who 
doubt even if they do not deny the inspiration of 
the Scriptures, have proposed in this way to make 
the path easier for the perplexed and the troubled. 
But it has been urged in reply that no other 
subject is studied by the surrender of facts ; that 
to give up a part is not anywhere else the best way 
to gain the whole ; that to meet in this way one 
class of minds is to unsettle others. It is indeed 
very true that in arguing with a man on any topic 
the primary thing is to show him that, believing 
one thing, he is thereby compelled to go on and 
believe another truth involved in the one he admits. 
But that is not to assert that you believe no other 
truth than the one which you are presenting to 
him. You do not surrender all else in order 
to assert something on which you and he agree. 
Careful thinkers see what is involved in denial. 
To-day the great question in religious inquiry is of 
the basis of authority rather than of the method 
of reasoning. The more legal and logical any 
mind, the more judicial its cast, the stronger will 
be its demand for authority in religion. Authentic 

27 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

documents are the necessity of the century for a 
rehgion which centers in a great historic person 
like Jesus Christ. Loose-jointed minds may work 
in other ways, but trained and scholarly men will 
insist on documentary evidence as to historic facts ; 
and when some of the facts are supernatural, they 
will crave supernatural accuracy in the record of 
them. 

Nor is this conviction of the inspiration of the 
volume needed alone for careful and cultured 
thinkers. Others as well need this foundation. 
The great mass of Christian men, men of large 
common sense, but without classical training, are 
the ones chiefly needing to be satisfied. They are 
the bulk of the Christian community. Those who 
know them the best respect their convictions the 
most. They are the safest jury with w^hich to en- 
trust moral causes. They are the men mainly ad- 
dressed by the Bible. For merely scholastic ques- 
tions they have as little aptitude as they have 
concern. They believe in the reality of truth. 
They have mental and moral health enough to be- 
lieve that the truth can be known. They feel that 
the Bible is for them. They are convinced that 
they are able to make up their minds about the 
truth. They think the book was given them for 
their salvation from error as well as from sin. 
They know it as the most democratic of books in 
this respect. And so, this book, addressing this 
great and grand class of mankind out from which 
have come foremost leaders in moral and religious 
reforms, has an immense hold upon them as an in- 
spired volume. Its Christ sprang from this class 

28 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



of men. Among them he found his apostles and 
out of their ranks have come his foremost servants 
the ages through and the world around. These 
men in their need and their claim are to be re- 
garded. It is to them an almost intuitive truth 
that a Bible of any considerable worth must have 
a divine sanction. They instinctively feel that 
some higher authority than man is needed. This 
book furnishes it for them. It would take another 
book with greater miracles clustering about a 
greater Lord whose utterances were more tender 
and whose promises were more glorious — if such a 
book there could be — to convince them by its 
testimony that this book is not distinctively in- 
spired of God. They feel that it is true. They 
are sure of its trend. Their moral intuitions are 
roused and their hearts are capable of a reasoning 
on such a theme which is as sound as any logic of 
the head. They know that the whole trend of 
their best feeling and the whole trend of the book 
is the same. The key fits the lock. 

No argument better satisfies any man's head and 
heart alike than that of trend. Some of these 
men may be too impatient of discussion. They 
may need to be assured that those who enter on 
the investigation of this subject of inspiration, do 
so with a friendly rather than an unfriendly pur- 
pose ; that their own moral intuitions are not to be 
outraged. These believers cannot give up what 
they know with the deepest moral knowledge of 
their souls. They need to be assured that, instead 
of denying or even setting aside for the time, on 
the plea of fairness, these moral certainties, we are 

29 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

going to consider candidly these facts of their re- 
ligious experience. They need to know that we 
seek also a logical basis, in addition to the experi- 
ential proof on which they rightly insist ; that the 
method in which we are to prosecute the inquiry is 
that of strict induction until we have assembled 
the facts ; that one class of these facts is this very 
experience. We are to examine also the direct and 
the indirect teaching of the Scriptures themselves 
on this subject. The legitimate deductions from 
all this mass of evidence are to be carefully 
drawn. And thus we are to gather up all the va- 
rious and consenting evidences which show that 
we have not followed '^ cunningly devised fables " 
in accepting the Scriptures as the ^' word of God." 
These men feel none too strongly the importance 
of this matter, while all scholarly and devout men 
call inspiration ^'the burning question of the 
hour." 

In the previous section there was set forth, to 
some extent, the importance of the subject. And 

perhaps the difference in the 

_, Section IL results of the extreme theories 

o^^tS ""^ inspiration was dwelt upon 

sufficiently. But what if there 

is another side ? What if it is of equal importance 

to look fairly upon the unifying principle which, it 

may be, runs through all these diverse theories ? 

What if we can discover, not indeed harmony in 

them, but a certain unity of trend ? And what if 

this principle of trend not only is found in the 

varying theories of the book, but is also a feature 

30 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



of the Scriptures themselves ? All the theories 
confess to the fact that we have here a most re- 
markable book in contents, in tone, in trend of 
thought, and in trend of fact as well. The the- 
ories run for a certain distance in the same general 
direction. 

It may be freely granted that their unlikeness 
is very obvious. But certainly their similarity in 
some things is worthy of our recognition. What 
if this likeness as well as this unlikeness is such 
because the subject of inspiration is one far too 
wide to be spanned by any single theory ? What 
if each most extreme view explains some things 
better than any other and yet in turn has its own 
defects ? What if the trend of all the theories is 
like the trend of all the book ? Trend is tendency. 
It realizes itself in seeking, through present mani- 
festations, its final accomplishment. It is that 
course in things which goes onward to result, that 
direction in things which seeks a goal. It may be 
so strong as to satisfy us completely as to its char^ 
acter and its ends. There is a descriptive defini^ 
tion of God as ''that stream of tendency that 
makes for righteousness." In like manner one 
might describe inspiration, in one of its aspects, 
as that tendency in human affairs which makes for 
divine revelation, the divinely guided record of 
which is the Bible. And we are to recognize this 
human tendency in the various theories of inspira- 
tion, and also to recognize the divine tendency in 
the book itself. 

There are those who admit only this : that the 
highest expression of the religious thought of 

31 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

former ages is to be found in this book. In some 
very general sense they allow that it is a record of 
the teachings of foremost souls enlightened by the 
Spirit of God. They say that the book shows 
great religious genius. But even this restricted 
view carries with it a vast deal more as a necessary 
deduction than those who admit so much would 
willingly allow. But what this admission really 
involves will be considered farther on. 

There are those who claim the verbal inspiration 
of the book, i. e., the inspiration of its words. 
These claimants differ widely among themselves ; 
some holding to a mechanical dictation, in which 
a man is merely an '^amanuensis of God," and 
some insisting that the verbal guidance only pre- 
serves the penman from error in expressing his 
thought. A verbal theory, they say, need not be 
a mechanical theory. 

There are again other men who contend only 
for the inspiration of the thought by the Spirit of 
God. And the inspiration of the thought does 
indeed lift us to a broader moral atmosphere than 
that of the mere word. And some feel that if 
they must choose between the two theories, the 
theory of the inspired thought is the more spiritual, 
the more logical, the more reliable for us, than that 
of a merely verbal inspiration. 

Others would unite the two theories. They 
claim that if the inspired thought does not abso- 
lutely compel an inspired expression, it clearly 
points in that direction. 

Then there is the dynamical theory of inspira- 
tion. It is that the writers of Scripture were 

32 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



suffered to fall into no error or mistake in things 
affecting moral fact or religious doctrine, though 
they took their own way of recording facts, even 
when some of the facts, not especially religious 
and but incidentally named, were not geograph- 
ically or historically exact. For religious purposes 
they are absolutely truthful. 

Again, there are those who claim that the series 
of events are inspired — these only. The teaching 
which historians, prophets, evangelists, and apostles 
draw from these inspired events has little or no 
divine guidance. We have left us nothing other 
than that which very shrewd and profoundly re- 
ligious men have seen in them. And thus each 
age has put its stamp upon the inspired events, 
seeing them in its own atmosphere and limitations. 
So that an event, say that of the deluge, has one 
teaching for the age of Moses, as it looks back to 
it ; another teaching for the age of Joel ; and a 
third for the age of Jesus. It is seen by the eye of 
Paul and by that of Peter, each putting into it his 
own personality and imperfection. Neither the 
thought nor the word has inspired worth ; and the 
narration is simply a water-mark showing the moral 
or the literary position of an age or of a man. 

About each of these theories and others which 
could be named, some things may be said : 

I. It is obvious that each of them, since it has 
clear and devout thinkers as its advocates, may 
have in it some element of truth. 

II. One of these theories may explain a par- 
ticular phase of the subject more satisfactorily 
than any other to some careful inquirer. 

c 33 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

III. That seldom is any one theory held in 
absolute consistency. 

Those, for instance, who hold to the most ex- 
treme form of verbal inspiration, even when they 
compare man's work to that of a *^pen in the hand 
of divinity," do not hesitate to point out the fact 
of the testimony of eye-witnesses in the case of 
Moses when describing his wilderness journey, and 
in the case of the apostles when describing the 
miracles and teachings of the Lord. So too, those 
who hold to the inspiration of the events as a 
series ask us to notice the fact that, in some cir- 
cumstances, other words than those selected in the 
record would have spoiled the relation of one 
member of the series to the rest. To us it would 
seem that the words need to be as carefully chosen 
sometimes as the events, to be of any worth in 
the premises. Thus no man is probably quite 
consistent in his special theory. He extends or 
contracts it in given cases. In using his theory 
he transgresses it by a happy inconsistency. 

It is the same v/ith the man who insists that the 
writers are to be regarded chiefly as splendid speci- 
mens of lofty human genius. Now and then these 
biblical writers seem to him to snatch a glance be- 
yond that limitation. Now and then they reach a 
plane and utter a word that has the tone of the 
superhuman. The seer sees. The hearer hears 
words beyond those which are mortal. The theory 
is forgotten as the words inspire. The man has 
allowed, in a moment of vision, what he had been 
loth to admit when the vital eye had become 
dimmed. Men are sometimes more believing than 

34 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



their unbelief. The natural faculty for believing 
asserts its potency. And here and there a word, 
a truth, or a series of events, is more than human 
on the biblical page. 

The frequent and happy inconsistencies of the 
advocates of any one special theory should teach 
us that it will be best to hold any theory less in a 
hard and fast way and more in a way that sees in 
each and all a trend. It is not necessary to find 
any common ground of agreement on definite 
points, but rather to see if each does not contain 
a truth which the others fail to emphasize, and to 
note that in them all there is a certain trend of 
thought. 

IV. It is evident also that investigators on this 
field of inquiry should be careful not to under- 
value the results others have reached. No man 
serves the truth best by showing that all other 
men are mistaken. Truths are friendly. It is not 
worth while to discredit all others to get a hearing 
for one's self. The poorest kinds of arguments on 
some great themes are those which work toward 
mutual destructiveness. In the very varieties of 
theories one may find not indeed a unity of result, 
but of intention, of tendency, of outlook. They 
may be approximations. One need not disparage 
the lesser light another man has brought, nor the 
different way by which that other man approaches 
the subject and reaches his end. The argument 
most convincing to another man may be the least 
satisfactory to you who hold the same truth with 
him. But you do not need to bring your superior 
way into right angles with his. Let it be parallel. 

35 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Yours goes farther, as you think. But do not seek 
at any point on these highest themes to antagonize 
his view. Members of the same army should not 
draw swords on each other. We cannot afford in 
getting at the intellectual form of this singularly 
broad subject to cultivate antagonisms. The truth 
may be, and probably is, far broader than any or all 
of our theories of it. Every man working amid the 
materials of this problem will help us, if it shall be 
found presently that the utmost possible for us to 
do is to establish the fact of trend and to discover 
which way it leads. 

This will not be to attempt the establishment of 
any new theory of inspiration, but we may be able 
to show that each theory may have something that 
the other lacks. Each may cast a sidelight on the 
subject. He need not be wholly right who by 
some single view of the theme has opened a new 
line of thinking. The best views are approxima- 
tions. And he would be singularly wanting in 
knowledge of the theme of inspiration who thinks 
that the last word has been spoken. Let us wel- 
come all that any candid, prayerful, scholarly man 
has to say. He can hardly discuss the theme at 
all without contributing, incidentally at least, some- 
thing that may be worth our notice. There may 
be great error in his view as a whole, but some 
subordinate line of remark may be of especial value. 
Considered as the sole theory of inspiration his 
view may be utterly untenable. But is it not pos- 
sible that a theory while failing to cover all the 
ground may be a contribution as showing a trend .? 
What if all our theories only show which way the 

36 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



truth lies ? What if they are indications, prophecies, 
approaches ? All these beginnings show that there 
is somewhere a goal. They show a belief in some- 
thing higher than ordinary human genius in cer- 
tain writings. Perhaps the general direction of all 
these processes, starting as they do from various 
sides of the subject, will show by their variety not 
only the fact of trend, but that trend is the greatest 
fact of all. 

One of our foremost teachers in physics at the 
close of his series of lectures on ** gravitation,'' was 
asked by a student whom he had admitted to inti- 
macy, '* Do you think, professor, that your argu- 
ments have proved gravitation ? '' ^' Proved it ? 
No," was the instant answer. '^ We prove none 
of these things. We only show which way things 
tend. The facts look that way." Equally ignorant 
are we about ^* sound," about '^ electricity," and 
<^ chemical affinity." Our theories are at best only 
tentative. They do as working theories. We can 
see the general trend of scientific thought. We 
are on the right track ; but we have not come to 
the end. In biology it is the same. See how 
many have tried to define "life." No two of the 
great masters agree in their theory of it. Yet all 
know what it is experimentally. We all know that 
life is the one thing of which death is the opposite. 
We know it as the mysterious something that tends 
to make an organism do what it is plainly intended 
to do. If we cannot define, we can describe ; and 
all we do is to describe a direction, a tendency in 
things. 

In the great discussion concerning the existence 

37 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

of God some good thinkers are coming to give 
credit to all the different arguments as having a 
certain worth. The argument from design shows 
a great Designer. But need he be the Infinite and 
Eternal God ? The ontological argument shows a 
Creator. But may he not be a lesser being than 
the Almighty One ? The argument from the power 
displayed in the world shows potency beyond all 
our conception. But was there need of an abso- 
lutely Almighty Being to make this wondrous 
frame of things ? How do we know but that less 
than Infinite Wisdom could have contrived them 
all ? These arguments do not any one of them 
alone reach an absolute demonstration. 

It is the same with the argument that we have 
a natural, necessary, universal conviction that there 
is a God. It is the same with the argument that 
there is a preparation in the mind for receiving the 
idea of a Supreme Being. Not one of these argu- 
ments is destitute of worth. Each one of them 
has its advocates who must take care not to dis- 
parage the arguments of other thinkers. And so 
it is coming about that a large class of minds — 
and they not of inferior caliber — look on all these 
theories chiefly as exhibiting a tendency which is 
unmistakable. It is not what the arguments have 
in common that makes them of worth, but it is their 
very difference which makes this stream of tendency 
so evidential. As we dwell upon it, this trend be- 
comes the argument of arguments. So satisfying 
is it that we may well inquire whether it was not 
intended that various methods of approaching the 
truth on this matter should be used by different 

38 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



minds, and thus each of them contribute toward 
establishing a form of argument stronger than any 
one or all of them. So that the belief in God be- 
comes satisfactory to a degree impossible in any 
other way. 

Are there any who, because unused to this line 
of thinking, imagine that we surrender arguments 
either on the subject of divinirty or of divine in- 
spiration for a *'mere trend " ? But let us remem- 
ber that a trend may be of the very strongest kind. 
It may be the most positive evidence of a fact. 
Take that tendency called the '* magnetic trend." 
All over the surface of the world, as has been said, 
sweep the lines of magnetic force. They run up 
toward the Pole of the earth. These lines are the 
basis of two of the greatest sciences we have. By 
them we measure the world and the very skies. 
We venture, because of this trend, across oceans 
and deserts otherwise impassable. We measure 
the starry heavens by this same trend. These 
lines are all run toward a Pole that no man has 
yet seen, but which must exist. Trend is the 
strongest possible proof of it. No man in his 
senses wants any other proof. 

It is the same with reference to inspiration. He 
who ordained that trend should be the best proof 
of himself has ordained that it should be the best 
proof of his divine inspiration of the Bible. What 
if the nature of this divine inspiration is such that 
when his Spirit comes to man's spirit the law of 
the manifestation is similar ? And thus the trend 
in our own minds may be but the reflection of that 
in the Divine mind as shown us in the Divine word. 

39 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

And SO Divine inspiration may be proved to us 
in the same way as Divine existence. The point 
to which our human inquiries lead may be that to- 
ward which God's word also conducts us. Ten- 
dency is the great thing to be noted, alike in the 
Bible itself and in our study of its pervasive 
thought. This movement toward a definite point 
is seen in the fact of its varied methods of utter- 
ance. Just here there is a line of evidence toward 
which many students not quite satisfied with any 
one theory of inspiration are now looking. This 
living purpose, this determinative process, this evi- 
dent seeking for the goal, this active concernment, 
this whole strong trend of the Bible — these are 
the facts more satisfactory to many persons than 
any other proof that the book is from God. 

Notwithstanding the difficulty of exact logical 
definition, the interest felt in this matter of inspi- 
ration shows the immense importance attached to 
the subject. Elsewhere the subjects that deeply 
interest students are incapable of any other defi- 
nition than the descriptive one of trend. In biology, 
no definition of life satisfies any man save him who 
proposes it. But the thing itself is none the less 
real because, instead of definition, we must con- 
tent ourselves in the end with only a description. 
Our definition of God is always lacking and must 
be so. Even in nature, we apprehend many a 
thing we cannot comprehend. That a thing is, 
may be certain to us, when we do not understand 
how it is. And all the more important facts in 
nature, in philosophy, and in religion, are among 
these things that we can better describe than de- 

40 



THE SUBJECT STATED 



fine. Such is the case with this subject of Divine 
inspiration, the importance of which can hardly be 
overestimated. It is one of the ^* burning ques- 
tions" of the age. From every side we welcome 
all truth upon it. Every line of investigation 
which promises to give us any help is gladly em- 
ployed and all results carefully accepted. 

It will be, then, our pleasant task to look closely, 
even if briefly, at some of the chief methods open 
to us in examining this whole subject. Perhaps 
we shall find everywhere, amid various ways of in- 
vestigation, an increasing proof of trend. 



41 



CHAPTER II 

THE GATHERED MATERIAL 

The inductive method of investigating any sub- 
ject starts with the attempt to ascertain the facts. 

It asks, not what we should 
Section I. ^j^jj^j^ ^Yiey would be, but what 

Our Natural ^^ ^^^ j^ proposes no the- 
Intuitions ^ T^ ^i5 r ^ 

ory. It gathers facts as so 

much material on which subsequently we may 
work.^ It proposes to see these facts as nearly as 
possible in the dry light of a scientific method. It 
is true that a human eye must see these facts, and 
every observer has that which astronomers in their 
observations are obliged to take into account, viz., 
the "personal equation." Every man's eye has its 
peculiarity, for which in each case due allowance 
must be made. And there is a wide difference in 
the number of facts which different minds deem suf- 
ficient to constitute a basis that will warrant a con- 

^ '* Induction," says Whately, "is sometimes employed to 
designate the process of investigation and of collecting facts, and 
sometimes the deducing of an inference from them." In this 
part of the discussion, we are to investigate the facts of our 
human nature which show at once our need and our capacity to 
receive an inspired revelation ; and in a subsequent section we 
seek to ascertain the facts as found in our *' Written Bible." Cer- 
tain inferences may be drawn in the processes of investigation. 
But the "Warranted Deductions" are given a separate chapter. 
"Scientific induction is a constant interchange of induction and 
deduction." Definition in " Standard Dictionary." 

42 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



elusion. There is the discount always to be made 
for the judgment of different men as to the import- 
ance to be allowed to a given fact ; and there is also 
the danger that unimportant facts will not be ex- 
cluded and pertinent facts will not be given due 
weight. The method has its obvious limitations 
and disadvantages, even when applied to physical 
science. But when we come to the moral realm of 
things, the limitations and the dangers multiply. 
Prejudice and passion, partial intellectual training 
and imperfect moral judgment cannot but influence 
men. It is often, for instance, a difficult thing to 
decide whether a human mind as shown by a given 
book exhibits an ability amounting to genius. And 
how much greater is the difficulty arising from a 
man's own peculiarity, whether of temperament or 
of training, of deciding in an absolutely scientific 
way, by induction alone, whether the book we call 
the Bible exhibits the Divine mind working 
through the human genius in such a way and to 
such a degree as to warrant us in calling the book 
a Divine inspiration. The facts will have different 
weight with different minds, and with the same 
mind at different times. They will be differently 
marshaled and sorted. One mind will estimate 
them by number, another by quality. There are 
closely built minds, and there are loosely knit 
minds ; judicial minds and minds discursive. 
Above all, there are men who are nimble and men 
who are slow in their moral methods and judg- 
ments ; men who are unpractised gunners in moral 
warfare ; and other men whose accuracy and pre- 
cision show the result of careful training as they 

43 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

have used themselves in moral warfare amid the 
conflict of great principles. 

These considerations do not tend toward the un- 
fortunate conclusion that our human knowledge is 
unreliable. They show that one particular way of 
arriving at moral results may need to be compared 
and corrected by other methods of investigation ; 
just as the eye sometimes needs to be corrected by 
the ear, and the sense of smell by that of touch. 
The inductive method of inquiry is one, and is 
only one, of the ways of studying the subject be- 
fore us ; a way with its own limitations and weak- 
nesses.^ But it has also its value and its potency 
among the several ways of ascertaining the truth. 
Let us use it as best we may in this part of our 
discussion on the question of inspiration. 

It is a fact that Christianity exists as a religion 
in the world. It is likewise a fact that, for us, in 
these later centuries, this Christian religion stands 
closely connected with the existence of a book 
popularly called the New Testament. Says Bruce, 
" If the Gospels were to be lost, or all faith in 
their truth to perish, Christianity as a distinctive 
type of religion would perish." It is clear that for 
those accepting this book as an authority — an 
authority in the same sense as we accept certain 
well-known histories as authorities — there is found 
a secure basis on which we can begin in our 
inquiries on inspiration. And we might ask what 
the book says, directly, of its own inspiration, and 

^ *' Induction can ordinarily only give us no more than probable 
conclusions, because we can never be sure that we have collated 
all instances. " Definition in " Standard Dictionary. " 

44 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



what it assumes in its utterances. We might ask 
what its tone, its manner, and its bearing are. We 
might ask what such facts recorded in such a 
fashion clearly involve. We could obtain a good 
degree of certainty on this question by seeing 
what play is given to the human genius of the 
writers ; and we could also ask whether there is 
not sometimes manifested over and above this a 
conspicuous element which indicates a higher hand 
than that of man. We might not yet be ready to 
give any exhaustive definition of inspiration ; for 
the inductive method expressly waits for the ut- 
most possible gathering of material before it gives 
actual statements of the law that governs all the 
facts. But from such an acknowledged basis, it 
would be possible and even necessary to recognize 
a degree of divine guidance and endorsement. 
We may own facts when a full theory of them is 
not yet warranted. We may mark the fact of a 
trend even when we do not follow it to a conclu- 
sion. The facts may warrant us in looking to the 
east for the sun, even though the horizon is not 
yet flecked with the colors that show distinctly its 
rising beams. 

But there are those who do not allow us this 
basis. They want to go farther back for the facts. 
Very well. Then we retreat one step, and we 
get back to the religion out of which Christianity, 
as all admit, historically sprang. Judaism is cer- 
tainly a historic religion. It exists ; and it existed 
before Christianity. The main facts of Jewish 
history are sure. Such a nation as the Hebrews 
certainly appeared on the earth and did a definite 

45 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

work, and disseminated a definite set of ideas 
among the nations. It filled a distinct place, as it 
occupied for centuries a land central to all the 
ancient civilizations. It connected itself, histori- 
cally, in one direction with *^the youthful world's 
gray fathers," who were its boast and its model. 
It had a lawgiver who gave a series of legal insti- 
tutes that are the basis of the common law of the 
foremost centuries. The facts of the existence of 
such a nation and its mission, both legal and relig- 
ious, and of its peculiar influence on the world, 
are as sure as the existence of the sun in the 
heavens. And further: just as Christianity is ab- 
solutely connected for us with a certain book 
called the New Testament, so Judaism is connected 
for us unalterably with the facts of a book called 
the Old Testament. The two books being other 
than they are, the two religions were other than 
they are. These are basal facts. As each book 
stands connected with each religion, so the two 
books and the two religions stand connected with 
each other. There is therefore a four-fold basis 
which ought to be a satisfactory warrant. It is 
such for a vast number of inductive thinkers. 
And at another point in this discussion this basis 
is to be legitimately used. 

But there are those who would go back farther 
yet. Very well ; we will do it. Only one step 
farther is possible. We go back to those *' primi- 
tive beliefs," those '^original intuitions," those 
*^ warranted assumptions," which some practised 
thinkers claim to be basal to any thought whatso- 
ever, on both intellectual and moral questions. 

46 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



They are just what the ** axioms " are in geometry, 
or the multiplication table is in arithmetic. Axioms 
in geometry are formalized natural beliefs about 
space and number and quantity. Clearly stated 
and clearly seen, they carry their own conviction. 
They cannot be otherwise than they are. They 
are found, on working upon them, to be trust- 
worthy. They become verified when once they 
are assumed. In exactly the same way when we 
turn to the intellectual and moral realm of things 
we have ^^ primitive convictions." These are ^^ nat- 
ural and necessary truths." By the five senses we 
get, in some unexplained way, to the conviction of 
an external world in which the ^^ primitive truths" 
of space and number and quantity are actual 
existences. Exactly so, by consciousness — the 
contents of the mind looked in upon by itself — we 
get at those moral and intellectual ^Mntuitions," 
those ** original convictions," those *' primary 
truths," which are involved in all the moral and 
intellectual workings of the human mind and soul. 
For the soul does its work in a realm of things as 
real as is the material. '^Whatever," says Mill, 
'^ is known to us by consciousness is known beyond 
the possibility of question." And of these ^* axioms " 
in the moral realm we are as absolutely certain as 
of the axioms in geometry. If indeed there were 
any difference in the two classes of certainties, 
the certainty in the sphere of mind would be more 
abundantly proved. For we are more sure of the 
mind that knows than of the thing known to the 
mind through the senses. And while we may have 
been occasionally deceived about the things we 

47 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

thought we saw or heard, yet as to our thmking 
about them, we were not deceived. We know 
that we thought about the things. 

These mental and moral facts are the most 
thoroughly proven facts we know. To doubt them 
is to doubt thought itself. These ''axiomatic 
truths" are natural, necessary, and universal, as 
related to the realm of physical things. Once let 
the human mind clearly see them and they are 
self-evident. In like manner, let there be a dis- 
tinct and unobstructed view of these ''axiomatic 
moral convictions," these "primary principles of 
moral judgment," and they justify themselves. 
For they have the same three marks by which we 
test such truths, viz., the marks of naturalness, of 
necessity, and of universality. 

What are these moral intuitions ? So far as 
they bear upon the matter now under discussion, 
they are these : 

I. The belief in self : i. e., the belief in one's self 
as having one's own body and one's own mind. 
Our body is separated from the mass of matter 
and our souls from the mass of soul. We are our- 
selves. 

II. There is a belief in substance outside of our 
own bodies, and in mind outside of our own minds. 
Philosophy has attempted to explain how we get 
at our belief in an external world, whether of 
matter or mind. The various theories are usually 
held by careful students as not perhaps so defective 
in kind as in measure. The ladder ascends in the 
right direction, but it is too short. The last rung 
of it is just beyond our ken. The final step to- 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



ward a conclusion is not the logical one of the 
reason, but it is the logical one of the intuition. 
We are so made as to assume the existence of the 
outside world. It is the conviction less of the 
reason and more of the intuition. For intuitions 
are axiomatic to reason and they make reasoning 
possible. We have to believe in matter outside of 
our body, and also in reasoning minds outside of 
our mind. Reasoning involves a standard with 
which comparison is made in some other mind 
than our own. We assume other thinking than 
that of ''the me within us." 

III. There is an intuitional belief in ''the true 
and the false." We are ushered into a scheme of 
things in which these distinctions exist. We do 
not make them but find them here when we come. 
We assume them as existing in our own and in 
other minds as a law of judgment to be by us ap- 
plied ; and as having also a real existence outside 
of our minds. " The true " is what agrees with 
a rule or standard truth more or less clearly per- 
ceived. "The false" is also as real as is the true; 
and it is that which disagrees with the standard. 
Ten thousand times men have been deceived as to 
what particular things are true or false. But the 
things were judged to be true or false at the time; 
and when the mistake was discerned, the label was 
simply changed to the other object. The new 
judgment was on a new statement of the facts ; 
so that it was still an adjudgment about "the true 
and the false." The mind believes that the true 
is knowable, and persists in seeking it notwith- 
standing all former mistakes. It insists that the 
D 49 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

trouble was not in its decision, but in the mistaken 
presentation of the alleged facts at the bar of the 
mind. The court decides on the evidence pro- 
duced. If the evidence is false or even partial, 
the verdict in the case is as defective as is the 
evidence. The reality of the "true and the false" 
as a distinction to be made is not invalidated by 
any mistake of the witnesses on the stand. In 
any case there is a decision, and this means that 
the law exists and is acted upon by the judge. 

IV. There is an intuitive belief in "the right 
and the wrong." There is the assumption of a 
law, agreement with which is the right and dis- 
agreement with which is the wrong. This "law'* 
or "standard" or "principle according to which 
we instinctively judge," we do not make. Our 
consciences simply recognize it as existing. A 
good many things tend toward hindering the ac- 
tion of the conscience, exactly as in the case of 
the reason. But, getting down into the soul of 
man, we find conscience always there. However 
deflected, restrained, or limited, the fact that we 
are susceptible of being thus influenced, so far 
from suggesting doubt, confirms belief in it as 
an original principle, as a natural endowment. 
Men will differ about what things are right, as 
they do about what things are reasonable. All 
that we need now to notice is that they make the 
distinction, even when they do it erroneously. A 
man's conscience may have been trained to act 
narrowly and on only a very few things. There 
is said to be a tribe of Laplanders who will steal 
without compunction, except when a bit of rein- 

50 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



deer skin is thrown over an object. Then, and on 
that thing, conscience binds them. If it binds 
them on one thing, that fact shows conscience as 
existing. And such a conscience, making its dis- 
tinction of ''the right and the wrong'' in one 
thing, shows what it would do if allowed larger 
range and if exercised about other things. The 
fact that the ''sense of the right and the wrong" 
is anywhere employed is all that is needed here 
and now in this discussion. 

V. Equally instinctive is the idea of a God who 
is the standard of the true and the standard of the 
right. There are reasons of prodigious strength 
that would hinder a sinful race from believing in a 
holy and just God. But the conviction holds. It 
cannot, for any considerable number of men, be 
beaten down. It has been strangely perverted. 
Gods many and lords many have been invented 
to take the place of the original monotheistic con- 
viction. But all the old nations had more or less 
distinctly the idea of the one God. Arguments 
from causation, arguments from design, arguments 
from moral law and moral results, all go a certain 
way toward the proof, or rather toward dissipating 
the counter arguments which human guilt, in its 
frantic desire to deny him, have devised. Argu- 
ment meets objection. But the argument needs 
also the help of the "natural instinct," of the "in- 
ward conviction," of "the moral persuasion," of 
the "original handwriting of God testifying to 
himself." The attempt to prove by mere argu- 
ment the bare existence of God may fail. So too 
may fail the effort to find the merely characterless 

51 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

existence of God as an original instinct of man. 
The instinct is a conviction as to a moral God, 
who has moral qualities as well as mere existence. 
He is a fact, not only in the region of mind, but 
in that of soul as well. He dwells not only in the 
sphere of thought and will, but in the realm of 
the moral world. His existence is not to be con- 
ceived of as apart from the sphere of the right and 
wrong. It is a holy God whom good men crave 
and evil men fear, and all men in the clearest mo- 
ments of moral insight must own. 

VI. The idea of immortality is also a natural 
belief. Arguments of vast weight have been ad- 
vanced. They almost reach the goal of proof. 
They are sufficiently strong to warrant men in 
acting upon them. But after all the innate con- 
viction is the one evoked by these arguments. 
We are prepared to believe in immortality. Death 
seems to interrupt life, but the superficial argu- 
ment that "death ends air' satisfies only those 
who want it true that they do not live forever. 
The instinctive feeling remains. In his book 
'^Scarabs,'' Dr. Myer, the Egyptologist, tells us 
that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was 
an "advanced instinct of humanity." He says : 

It is a curious phase of archaic Egyptian thought, that 
the farther we go back in our investigations of the origins 
of its religious ideas, the more ideal and elevated they ap- 
pear as to the spiritual power of the unseen world. Idol- 
atry made its greatest advance subsequent to the epoch of 
the Ancient Empire, and progressed until it finally merged 
itself into the animalism of the new empire and the gross 
paganism of the Greeks and Romans. 

52 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



The intuition is not only incited to act by the 
rational nature, but by other parallel intuitions. 
We ourselves know ourselves to be spiritual in the 
core of our being. The moral conviction of a 
moral God with whom we have to do, is closely 
allied to this natural belief in immortality. We 
carry with us when we die our moral personality. 
And this parallel conviction is corroborative of 
immortality. 

There are beginnings of moral action engender- 
ing such spontaneous hopes, such vital and neces- 
sary expectations of future blessing, that they 
would need some express revelation from heaven 
to forbid them were they untrue. The leading is 
not misleading. Intellectual powers, going on 
toward their perfected working, moral processes, 
begun in each to-day and demanding a to-morrow 
for their completion, are not to be blasted by the 
incident of death to the body — the body which has 
survived unharmed greater changes than death 
itself. These convictions give force to reasoning, 
since the healthful reason loves to reach in another 
way, as nearly as possible, the convictions held by 
the soul as its original endowment. The mind 
declares concerning itself that it possesses primary 
thoughts that are undying. Other things may be 
transient. These truths once seen, these original 
thoughts once beginning to give their peculiar 
thrill to the human soul, demand, expect, and 
prophesy, an immortality in which their eternal 
expansiveness shall find due scope. 

VII. The last of these primary convictions need- 
ing to be named for this discussion is that of a 

53 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

final judgment. Whether it is a judgment ^*day '' 
or a judgment *^ period'' no intuition can tell us. 
There is no doubt of a primitive feeling of accounta- 
bility to God. It has been, in its development, 
sadly distorted. The conviction has been used to 
awaken a craven rather than a holy fear. The 
abuse of the feeling of accountability has made 
men rebel against the idea, and fortify their rebel- 
lion with whatsoever of reasoning they could com- 
mand. And so reasons for and against this cul- 
minating accountability have been given. The 
order of all orderly things, and equally the disorder 
and confusion of the moral world about us, have 
been used to show that a judgment is needed. 
There is a conviction that things will culminate, 
that God must be met, that stewardship is to be 
ended, probation to be closed, and results summed 
up in a final judgment. The inward conviction 
never gets due voicing for itself until it claims 
that, as a subject of moral government, man must 
render final account to him who stands at its head 
as sovereign Judge. 

Some would say that this is less an original con- 
viction and more a mood of mind preparatory to 
the revealed announcement of the fact ; an apti- 
tude expectant of the idea, so that it is instantly 
recognized when once declared. But this way of 
conceiving of the genesis of the idea differs from 
the other only by taking into account the obscura- 
tions and hindrances that result from human sin. 
The rubbish removed, the vein of native gold is 
revealed which elsewhere comes frequently to the 
surface. The conviction that there is One who 

54 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



ever observes, ever rules, and will reward and 
punish, is another form in which this intuitive 
belief manifests itself. There is a Judge. Then 
there is a judgment. The ideas are connected. 
The one helps the other, as parallel thereto. The 
broken and distorted image of God needs rectifi- 
cation by reviving the original instinct ; and in 
like manner the intuitive energy that makes for a 
final judgment as a belief, is evoked and clarified 
by the removal of all hindrances, through the aid 
of a Christian revelation. 

About all these native and original convictions a 
few things need to be considered. 

I. They are liable to be overlooked. However 
native, spontaneous, and universal they may be in 
themselves, this must be remembered, that self- 
knowledge is the one thing most difficult to obtain. 
If the proper study of mankind is man, it is still a 
fact that thousands never do actually make a study 
of their own consciousness. However universal 
any one of these convictions may be, if a man does 
not look within he will not see it. And those who 
begin this study of their own intuitions may not be 
able at first to distinguish those that are spontane- 
ous from those that seem to be the result of edu- 
cation only. And, when seen, some persons may 
not tabulate them rightly ; while others, through 
lack of facile language, may not give them the 
adequate expression. In a busy life, so many 
things outside of our own consciousness claim 
attention, that the contents of one's own mind 
may not be observed until attention has been 
called to them by some other man's report of his 

55 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

consciousness. When we call these convictions 
universal, we do not say that all men are always 
conscious of them ; but that, when they are made 
known, either by our own thought or by the sug- 
gestion of other men's convictions, there is a quick 
answer in response which every human soul is 
ready to give. The fact of the liability of these 
primitive and positive convictions to be overlooked 
is very suggestive as to the need of some further 
enlightenment of man by revelation. 

2. Intuitions can be corroborated by evidence. 
The multiplication table, taken at first entirely on 
trust, by sheer force of memory, has been corrobo- 
rated by the mathematical calculations of all who 
work at figures. And in like manner these moral 
intuitions are shown to be primitive along the 
whole course of moral history, as men have used, 
and even as they have misused them. Rawlinson 
says: 

The historic review lends no support to the theory that 
there has been a uniform growth and progress of religions 
from fetichism to polytheism and from polytheism to mono- 
theism. In most of the religions the monotheistic idea is 
most prominent at first, and gradually becomes obscured 
and gives way to a polytheistic corruption. The facts point 
to a primitive religion from without, and then a gradual 
clouding of the primitive religion everywhere unless it were 
among the Hebrews. 

Says Max Muller : 

The monotheistic intuition is inseparable from the con- 
ception of religion, and we find traces of it in all places 
and all times ; and this monotheistic conviction is always 

56 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



accompanied by faith in the persistence of the human per- 
sonality after death. 

Says Rev. George Owen : 

The old classics of China show a wonderful knowledge of 
God. The founders of the Chinese race believed in an 
omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God, the moral 
Governor of the world and the impartial Judge of man. 

Livingstone says of tribes in the interior of 
Africa : '' They have clear ideas of a supreme God." 
Testimonies of this kind could be quoted from an- 
thropologists, which would fill many pages. It is 
true that some learned writers have asserted that 
polytheism and fetichism were primitive beliefs. 
But, going a little farther back, they would be 
obliged to confess to the fact of the more ancient 
faith. The trend now differing from that forty 
years ago is toward a belief in God, in a moral 
government and in a judgment, as the earliest con- 
victions of mankind. And here too is manifested the 
fact that there is abundant room for a new revela- 
tion which shall retrace the old letters, shall clear 
the moss from the half -effaced words, and restore 
the original handwriting of God to the freshness 
and beauty of the original inscription. Says a 
writer not believed to be friendly to the Bible, in 
'* Articles of the Negative Creed," as quoted by 
the ^* Contemporary Review": *'A revelation at- 
tended by prophecies and miracles is a conceiv- 
able proposition, and might teach us that which 
otherwise we could never know." 

3. These intuitions are trustworthy as far as 

57 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

they go.^ They are, indeed, but rudiments. They 
are only the alphabet that makes a written litera- 
ture a possibility. As a complete religion they 
would be a manifest failure. They tell us some- 
thing of great use, when there is also power sup- 
plied to overcome the inertia brought about by 
the sinfulness and weakness of our common hu- 
manity. They have no hint of helpfulness when 
we have done a wrong, or have fallen into any 
feebleness through infirmity or evil. They are 
trustworthy deliverances of consciousness as to 
primitive truths ; but they lack potency, just 
where we most need it, to make them executive for 
our highest moral good. They are sure points for 
starting ; but they do not insure the gaining of 
the prize at the other end of the course. 

4. These intuitions, however clear in them- 
selves, are liable to be confused by us in our using 
of them. The axioms of geometry do not insure 
the correct demonstration by the pupil. He may 
employ them wrongly. The mind is sometimes 
deflected in its moral reasoning by unknown preju- 
dices. We are less fair than we had thought our- 
selves. There is not due allowance for our own 
personal equation. Other principles than those of 
the moral nature come into antagonism. The vol- 

^ Commenting on the remark of Morrison, that our religious be- 
liefs will soon be " a pious hope rather than a reasoned judg- 
ment," and also, upon Renan's remark that religious belief *' will 
die out slowly, undermined by scientific education," Benjamin 
Kidd in "Social Evolution," says : *' These beliefs must remain 
to the end a characteristic feature. These religious phenomena 
are among the most persistent." Indeed, the main value of 
Kidd's discussion is his claim for the reality of the religious senti- 
ment and for what it involves and promises. 

58 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



untary nature may overrule the ethical. Will 
may be pitted against God, and passion against 
conscience. There may be the cross-action of 
mingling and also of opposing motives. There are 
cyclones on the ocean, in which mariners say that 
the wind seems to blow from every quarter at 
once. No trend, as has been said, is more sure in 
nature than that of the magnet to the Pole ; and 
yet there are magnetic currents and there are de 
flections which, unless known and taken intft 
account, would work harm to any ship. She may 
follow her compass to her ruin, if the deflections 
are not studied. Nevertheless the compass is an 
essential thing. Let us give it all honor. We do 
not esteem it less because of the well-known mag- 
netic deviations. So that, by what these intui- 
tions declare, and equally by their liability to be 
warped from certainty in our actual use of them, 
they call for something outside of themselves by 
which we may study them the better. Beside the 
true compass, the mariner carries also his true 
chart, with all the currents, alike of the terrestrial 
and the magnetic oceans, carefully described ; and 
with all the allowances that must be made for safe 
navigation carefully set down. 

And herein, again, is the need of revelation 
clearly manifest. The intuition in some minds 
may need liberation from the self-will or from the 
wrong reasoning of the individual man. There are 
tides of popular feeling that eddy about each 
man's personal life. The brighter and more active 
the mind, the quicker it is seized upon and domi- 
nated by the age-spirit. Always some wind is 

59 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

blowing over the particular continent on which one 
lives his mental and moral life. And the demand 
is clear for some rectification, for some outside 
help, in restoring polarity, in insuring against un- 
known and dangerous currents. There is certainly 
room for a revelation from God, for correction, for 
instruction, and for reproof. Says Professor Bruce : 
*' By reason of sin, the confusion of social life, 
and the apparent play of mechanical necessity in 
the events of the world, the light of intuition is 
dim. Our intuitions and inferences require con- 
firmation ; our faith, in its weakness, cries out for 
help. What we need, we get in the Gospels." 

5. Intuitions may be called forth by facts. 
That they may lie partially dormant, waiting for 
that which is intended to rouse them, is certain. 
For are they not capacities as well as potencies ? 
Are they not, as are all other parts of our human 
nature, voices waiting for fit words in which to give 
themselves better utterance ? It is this capacity, 
not only for the development of the instinct in its 
own province as an instinct, but as a power to free 
itself from the oppression of other influences and 
to avail itself of other outside forces that it may 
have opportunity to work out its legitimate results, 
which we have just now in view. An instinctive 
conviction cannot be made more or less a convic- 
tion in itself ; but it can be obscured and debased 
by other and outside potencies ; and it can also be 
clarified and so, in its actual workings, be made of 
larger worth. 

And just here there is room for a parallel reve- 
lation which shall present those facts, whether 

60 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



Hebraistic or Christian, which tend toward rousing 
these intuitions to their normal energy. The idea, 
native to the human mind, of one God and he a 
spiritual being, is kept in proper exercise by hav- 
ing the attention directed to moral and spiritual 
truths. These moral and spiritual facts create a 
clearer atmosphere in which the intuition can best 
give us its deliverances. A religious education in 
which the mind and soul are early led to use the 
moral and spiritual powers, tends to liberate these 
instincts and give them largest room for exercise. 
Taught to regard God as a Spirit and one's central 
self as also a spirit, there is the consciousness of 
acting in a spiritual realm of things, the reality of 
which is not only assured by the parallel facts, but 
by the deepest and most central conviction of our 
very nature itself. Whatever helps us from the 
outside, carries with it a kind of evidence that it 
comes from the God whose sign-manual is set upon 
it. That thing which is so helpful is thus shown 
to be a co-partner with these instincts in the moral 
realm of things. It is in this way — by outside and 
parallel facts which minister best to these moral 
convictions — that we find the difference between 
the ^^pure indestructible Godward instinct" and 
those depraved conceptions of the idea of God 
which have been so baleful in human history. 

6. These moral intuitions are mutually con- 
sistent. Consistency with each other is not 
enough to claim for them, but each is consistent 
with the whole. Sir William Hamilton, speaking 
of these primary convictions of the human soul, 
says : 

6i 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

They are many ; they are in co-ordinate authority, and 
their testimony is clear and precise. It is therefore compe- 
tent for us to view them in correlation, to compare their 
declarations. No attempt to show that the data of conscious- 
ness are mutually contradictory has yet succeeded. 

The reason is evident. They are together what 
hands and feet and heart and brain are to the 
body — parts of one vital system. The eye is not 
only for the light and the air for the lungs, but all 
four of them are adaptations of man to the physi- 
cal world and of the physical world to man. And 
thus it comes about that plain men, scarcely able 
to formulate these instincts and to separate one 
from the other, act upon them freely, and know 
only this, that they have a general conviction 
about religious truth which nothing can dislodge. 
Many a plain Christian can be thrown into a state 
of doubt when an opponent comes to him with 
purely logical difficulties. He cannot answer the 
objector, but he knows that the objection can be 
answered at some time and by somebody, because 
the moral instinct within him abides firm. He 
knows the opponent is wrong ; but how he knows 
it, he is not able to say. So that the strong lo- 
gician, who has his laugh against *^ the narrowness 
of the men who will not yield to reason," may be 
the narrower of the two, since he uses but one 
side, and that not the largest or the surest side, of 
himself on moral themes. The fact that these 
convictions are mutually consistent brings about, 
in such a plain man's mind, a whole inner world of 
exchangeable moral moods and sympathies which 
fortify him against such assaults. On some special 

62 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



lines he has not as yet accurately sounded and 
mapped out his own deeper selfhood. But his 
moral convictions have been roused by the con- 
tact with revealed truth. 

And so the assaults of unbelief have been in 
vain. For the moral intuitions, working together, 
have detected the fact that something was wrong 
in the plausible objection. So that plain men, by 
the happy care which gave them as an original 
part of themselves this inner body of moral truth, 
have often been saved from error and sin when no 
other aid was at hand. Soon thereafter they may 
have refreshed their own minds by the scriptural 
statement of the truth. But the assault found its 
first resistance in their own instinctive convictions. 
A God who is a spiritual being is a correlative fact 
with a spiritual nature in man. The distinction, 
vital and indestructible, between ^' the true and 
the false," demands a Standard Mind, agreement 
with whom is the rectification of this distinction ; 
since his conviction is the absolute truth. A 
moral God is for the same reason the Standard 
Soul of the universe, agreement with whom is 
*'the right," and disagreement with whom is ''the 
wrong." 

This God, a moral God, is also by correlation of 
ideas, a Moral Governor. And by the same con- 
nection of principles, a moral governor of man 
must be man's final Judge, to whose decision the 
limited time of a probation looks forward — a de- 
cision being necessary at the close of any period 
of probation. There is thus the relation and the 
interaction of these intuitions. And such a free 

63 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

play of these principles used by the plain every- 
day men, of whom the great mass of the race is 
made up, is itself a notable fact in the Divine 
ordering of the world's moral life. 

7. These intuitions are prophetic. The hands 
on the human body are made to grasp. They are 
prophetic of a world outside the hands themselves. 
All faculties of body and mind — unless one should 
claim that these moral instincts are the exception 
— are prophetic. But why should any one ask to 
have these integral parts of our nature excepted ? 
The fact that they work differently from the rest 
of our mental and moral organism, is exactly par- 
alleled by our bodily organism, in which some parts 
work in ways unlike others. The body does not 
terminate on itself ; no more does the mind. They 
are each in a certain sphere of things to which 
they are correlated. The correlation is as much a 
fact as the organism. All this is prophetic. 

In the old Hebrew religion there were prophetic 
rites and ceremonies. Some of that nation saw 
only the rite and never the meaning; only the 
ritual, never what it betokened ; only the shadow, 
never the substance ; only the orderly procedure 
of the service, never the glorious prophecy of the 
Messiah of God. So it is about these intui- 
tions. Some would stop with them. But a hun- 
dred times the experiment has been tried, until it 
is sure that to stop with them is to stifle them. A 
few merely philosophical men, amusing their intel- 
lectual leisure by discussing these fundamental in- 
stincts, have proposed to accept them as a religion. 
But neither they themselves, nor any appreciable 

64 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



fraction of the human race, has ever stood on that 
ground for any length of time. To collect the 
words of dissatisfaction which the best of these 
men have uttered would be an easy but an unneces- 
sary labor. Philosophy teaches about a religion, 
but it is not itself a religion. If you set down its 
value in itself alone, if you consider it as its own 
end, you will find that the estimate of its influence 
on the world at large is but inconsiderable. It is 
the hands grasping — but grasping at air. The feet 
lifted to walk — but left lifted. It is appetite with- 
out bread ; it is thirst without the natural supply 
of water. There is a vast cumulative want. With 
close study men may, by the light of the intellect, 
look down into the soul and see and tabulate its 
instinctive ideas. But this is to make a philosophy 
rather than to discover a religion. And after the 
study is completed, the satisfaction is not that of 
the satisfied soul, but only the merely intellectual 
satisfaction of having discerned that the instinct 
is a fact of our human nature. 

The religions of the world have, alike by the 
perversion and by the satisfaction of these moral 
instincts, shown that they crave a person. Whether 
this does or does not involve a peculiar and even 
inspired record of the sayings and doings, both 
ordinary or extraordinary, of this person, is to be 
afterward considered. But the first thing is the 
person who shall gather up, with due recognition 
and endorsement, these instincts. The attempts 
to supply this need of a person have given us 
heroes and demigods, lords many and manifold, 
who have been worshiped more or less fully by 

E 65 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

their fellow-men. The long line of mythological 
personages shows that the worshipful spirit, the 
result of these instincts, is a power among man- 
kind. If the One Holy God has been discarded, 
the idea of a god of some sort remains. Rever- 
ence requires a person to be reverenced. 

It is the same with the other perversions of 
original moral intuitions. The singular applica- 
tions of the idea of God's care as extending only 
to a class of things or to a class of men ; the sin- 
gular limitations of the idea of the right and the 
wrong, so that kingly or priestly men were ex- 
empted from the law that binds others ; the singu- 
larly grotesque conceptions of the immortal life in 
its heaven and its hell ; the strangely fantastic ideas 
connected with the final day of judgment — all 
these things show that, in such a world as ours 
and in such a race as this of which we are mem- 
bers, there is need of rectification from without 
by some one who can clear away the debris of the 
fall and restore man to his primitive selfhood. 
These primary convictions were primarily trust- 
worthy. They are sure when we get back to them 
in their original force and purity. And the book 
that can reassert, confirm, and enforce them must 
also be a sure and trustworthy book, with all of 
inspiration which such a book involves. 

In another way, the degree of success gained by 
religions has shown the same fact. A person is to 
emerge in all the older and better beliefs. They 
all have a version, varied somewhat, of the primal 
promise, that One should appear to bruise the evil 
one who had so bruised and taken captive the race. 

66 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



In naming these primitive ideas in the human 
mind in the earlier part of this chapter, the pro- 
found expectation of a person as the world's 
teacher and deliverer and saviour was not included. 
And the omission was less because of doubt con- 
cerning it, and more because it will be conceded 
by all that there is at least an aptitude for it. 
There is a preparation, a presumption. It stands 
very near to a first truth. It is close upon a pri- 
mary conviction. There is an appetency for it. 
All the grand old historic souls of the world got 
from their own or from succeeding generations a 
little fragment of the reverence and worship that, 
in its fullness, can be given only to some divine 
Person who assembles in himself all the separate 
excellences they had exhibited, and who naturally 
demands therefore the utmost of reverence and de- 
votion. This idea, indestructible when once pro- 
claimed, universally received when once announced, 
exactly fits all these primitive instincts, even if it 
is not itself one of them. 

But the men who are appointed to represent 
each in some faint degree the excellences of this 
expected One must be in a series, and over them 
must preside a divine Providence. God's guidance 
of things and men, his intervening hand through 
law, or, if need ever be, above law, is the inspiration 
of all history. That the events are inspired in the 
sense that they are guided toward the world's 
readiness to apprehend the Person who is to restore 
the race, is one of the main things about inspira- 
tion. It is the inspiration not only of single events, 
but it is inspiration in marshaling them in an 

67 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

orderly series. The chain, link by link, is forged 
and united. No link is too small for the care of 
the One who constructs it all out of the freedom 
of all things and all men under his laws. The in- 
spiration of the events is that out of which all 
other kinds of inspiration can come. Other in- 
spiration demanded is supplementary. The events 
bring in due time the Person. The Bible is the 
record of the series of these inspired occurrences, 
of the evolution of them with reference to the 
Person, and of their culmination in the person 
and work of Christ Jesus. 

It will be admitted that these primary truths, 
described in the earlier part of this chapter, are 
taken up, endorsed, and employed in the Bible. 
As these '^ moral axioms " agree among themselves, 
so they agree with this book. The New Testa- 
ment does not traverse any one of them. It clari- 
fies them. It newly applies them. Its Christ 
ever appeals to them. Its apostles simply expand 
his utterances. The authority of the apostles is 
not original, but derived from him. They also 
work on the same basis of these instinctive con- 
victions. 

It is true that the Bible takes into account, as 
these primitive cognitions do not, certain dam- 
aging facts resulting from human sin. But in es- 
timating this disturbance from normal conditions, 
one source of its appeal is to this indestructible 
sense of the right and wrong in us. By this in- 
stinctive moral standard we know of the sin and 
so of the need of the forgiveness and restoration. 
The book clears away the mists that rise from this 

68 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



sinning nature. The book sharpens to its original 
potency the sense of God as holy, of him as the 
moral governor of the world, and of him as the 
one we must meet in judgment, and with whom we 
must abide or from whom we must depart forever. 
Of the remedy for sin's dominion and doom these 
instincts say nothing. They only help us to judge 
of the extent of the need. They prepare us for 
that widespread expectation of a Divine Person who 
is the world's hope. But just because they cannot 
tell us more definitely, they hold out welcoming 
hands toward the book which records for us what 
we know of the Person. The book thus comes to 
stand very close to these fundamental truths in- 
volved in all our thought on moral themes. All 
their trend is toward it. They are mutual agents 
in a common realm of things. The primitive con- 
victions of the moral nature and of the book are 
so nearly one — the book indeed going farther, but 
always along the same lines as they — that for a 
vast number of plain men the authority of the one 
is practically that of the other. The testimony 
from the two sources of authority is so mingled in 
their minds that the difference between the inner 
and outer handwritings is not really distinguished. 
The book is about a person. Christianity is dif- 
ferentiated from all other religions in that it gath- 
ers, not primarily about precepts or even doctrines, 
but about a person, Jesus Christ. Each Christian 
is a person also, with a personality capable of 
being moved in its central depths by this Person. 
Mahomet was not Islam, but only its prophet. 
Christ himself is Christianity. For this good 

(>9 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

reason the Bible, which has for its center this 
Christ, takes hold of these primary convictions. 
The book with its Christ and the handwriting 
within the soul are in close conformity. They live 
and breathe and glow and throb as one. They 
find the same goal. To multitudes the apprehen- 
sion of the person revealed in the book rectifies, 
strengthens, persuades, dominates the conscience 
within their own souls. The purest consciousness 
is that of men who have an experience of the re- 
ligion of Jesus Christ. We can study with best 
results these Christian souls in which there is a 
consciousness most nearly normal. We get near- 
est the true manhood of man in such men. And 
invariably they are men saturated with this book. 
They have the Holy Spirit witnessing in their 
spirits that they are the children of God. 

Some things the common consciousness of the 
human race gives us. Some things are given us 
by the special consciousness of the great consent- 
ing religious experience of Christians. Experi- 
mental religion has its deliverances about the book, 
about the person in whom it centers, and about the 
agreement of the person and of the book with the 
affirmations of our clearest and most exalted moral 
moods. In the great consensus of Christian experi- 
ence we get testimony in its purest form. The Lick 
Observatory, with its larger disk and longer range 
and greater height and clearer atmosphere, gets itself 
accepted in its discoveries by the whole astronomic 
world. Farther on, we shall study more largely 
this religious experience to find its contents and 
its deliverences. But, here and now, it is quoted 

70 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



as a parallel fact with those other utterances and 
is, with them, closely allied to a whole series of 
consenting and agreeing moral facts. The book 
and these primitive convictions give us just that 
alliance which broadens the moral basis for our in- 
duction. We are gathering a vast amount of moral 
material which, by its certainty and positiveness, 
is of great worth on the question of inspiration. 

In the examination of our primary moral intuit 
tions we saw certain facts which are a warrant for 
conclusions. Close to them, in o • tt 

especial agreement with them ^ ^^^^^^ iu , 
K . ^' . r ^1 Our Actual Bible 

and tendmg to free these con- 
victions from obscurity and to give them larger 
scope, we saw that a certain book, popularly called 
the Bible, is of great value. Its endorsement of 
these convictions, its statements concerning certain 
great facts, and the experience which it has gene- 
rated in the human soul, are parallel phenom- 
ena. Multitudes of plain men never make the 
distinction between the primary truths learned by 
analysis of their own natural convictions and those 
which are engendered by the teachings of the 
Bible. It must be, for them, the Bible as a stand- 
ard of appeal. They are so situated in life, so 
constituted mentally and morally, so unpractised 
in intricate reasoning from distinctly discovered 
'^ moral axioms" and "primary truths," that the 
basis of moral appeal for them is the Bible. This 
is not due to their ignorance. For in lines of com- 
mercial and political life they are not ignorant. 
But they are busy men, in a busy world, who else- 

71 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

where do not work from primary commercial and 
political principles distinctly recognized and avowed. 
They gain their commercial and political education 
in other and outside ways. They feel the power of 
trend, and use it along the lines of their life. The 
man at the wheel steers the ship ; but he does it 
through the knowledge of navigation which the 
master mariner possesses. The master of the ship 
tells the helmsman the course he is to steer. This 
sailor has little knowledge at first hand of astron- 
omy or of navigation ; but he can recognize the 
captain's competency in these things. It is in 
part knowledge and in part trust. He knows 
enough to trust for what he does not know. It 
must be so with the great mass of mankind. We 
are all made to trust, and there is that which we 
are to trust. The book stands so exactly related 
to these primary instincts, is so manifestly their 
fulfillment as prophecy, their complement as the 
half-sphere demands the whole, that we can now 
look at certain basal facts of the book itself. 

I. The book is clearly a growth. It has then 
the token of life. The difference between a thing 
dead and a thing living is that one increases and 
the other grows. The stone gains from without ; 
but the plant gains by growing from within out- 
ward. Its long finger-like roots are endowed with 
the power of search for what it can take in and 
use for building itself up. It rejects that which is 
harmful and useless. It finds the right drop of 
moisture for its thirst, and the fit morsel of soil 
for its food. It responds to sunshine and rain. It 
is alive. The life glows as well as grows. It thrusts 

72 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



out fitting branch and leaf and fruit. It utilizes 
all things that it can reach in its growth. The 
Bible is no stone increasing by outside and unsym- 
pathetic additions. It puts on its parts upon the 
principle of growth. It vitalizes the material it 
uses. It has an inward and mysterious principle 
of life. It grew. It did not happen. It was not 
ready-made in the skies and *^let down as so many 
golden plates," after the crass conception ascribed 
to the Mormon Bible. It is at the exact opposite 
of all that. It is the one great original instance 
of a true evolution. And while star-eyed science 
has been looking ever since its birth for some 
simple principle which should unify with the power 
of true life all this wide universe of things and 
has clapped its hands in almost infantile glee over 
the newly discerned idea of evolution, it has only 
recognized what, under other names, was claimed 
twenty centuries ago for the Hebrew Scriptures, 
and what Christian commentaries have from the 
first declared, that the Bible from its Genesis to its 
Revelation shows evolutionary progress. It is the 
foremost instance of a divine thought evolved, de- 
veloped, and embodied in shapely form. The 
whole idea of the book is unique. It gives us a 
series of inspired events, some of them natural, — 
and none the less inspired because natural, — some 
of them supernatural. They grew under God's 
touch and were recorded under the same shaping 
and guiding hand. Men are acting freely in these 
events, but God at the same time is inspiring the 
events ; men are acting freely in recording the 
inspired events, but God is as free to use. their 

73 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

freedom, so as to make the record trustworthy. 
This is the Hving fact about this living book. It 
possesses itself — so thoroughly alive is it — of all 
forms of literature, to inspire them with its vital 
idea. It appropriates them all, and builds itself up 
by them all ; just as does the plant that selects its 
own drop of water and bit of soil. Using thus all 
varieties of literary form, it gets its various hold 
on men of all aptitudes. It has its scraps of his- 
tory as old perhaps as Abraham — it may be older ; 
and these are woven together by Moses, and then 
touched and retouched, it may be, until their final 
form under Ezra. It has biographical sketches, 
moral etchings, elaborately wrought pictures of 
men long since dead ; but their history is so strik- 
ingly instructive that they rule us still from their 
silent urns. The book has its songs by Hebrew 
bards ; and they are more frequently quoted than 
those of the Grecian Homer or the English Shakes- 
peare. It has its prophecies ; and their fulfillment 
is the marvel of every man who sees a Hebrew 
face on the street of any city upon any continent 
of the world. It has its Gospels, the vividness of 
which makes one almost see their Christ, the art- 
lessness of the writers snatching a grace beyond 
the reach of art. It has its brotherly letters — 
epistles we call them, though letters were a better 
name — letters that discuss the grandest doctrines 
and yet are so familiar that they talk about a cloak 
at Troas and tell a woman at Corinth to wear her 
hair so as to suggest no immodesty. There are 
men so logically and judicially constructed in mind 
as to demand the authority of miracles as the basis 

74 



the; gathered material 



of belief in a revelation from God ; and here they 
find their miracles. Others are charmed and held 
and blessed by parabolic teaching ; and here it is 
given them. For those who crave clearly stated 
doctrines with no needless word added and no neces- 
sary word omitted, there are doctrinal discussions. 
For those who crave emotion in religion there are 
the ^'lively oracles" about the death and the resur- 
rection of the Lord. There are those who want 
direction for the life that now is ; and this book 
sets it before them, while at the same time it tells 
them of the life everlasting. It is a living book 
for living men. 

Some persons want to put it down upon a dis- 
secting table and cut and carve it. But that can 
only be done to a corpse. You may not try that 
method with your friend when he offers you his 
hand. You grasp his in return. This book meets 
you with a generous grasp. Its flexibility of form, 
its non-scientific method, its simple carelessness 
about apparent contradictions show that it is friendly 
for friends. It is a book of confidences for those 
who will confide in it. It trusts and calls for 
trust. It has such a plain, simple, and straightfor- 
ward air, that when men come to it with their scien- 
tific methods, with their narrow specialties, they 
are quite likely to mistake its meaning — much as a 
poet would miss the meaning of a mathematical 
problem, or a mathematician miss the meaning of 
a poem. It is the most baflfling book for the spe- 
cialist in any line, even of ecclesiastical learning ; 
but the best book for an all-around religious man. 
It is a book for cloister and palace. It is plainly 

75 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

a common book for mankind. The world is filled 
with good, fair, honest, workday people, with men 
of average mental and moral ability ; and the book 
is one which carries with it its own proof for the 
world's toilers. For like the sun, the best evi- 
dence for it is to stand out in its radiance and feel 
its warmth. Right through the book runs one liv- 
ing, unifying purpose that makes itself seen and 
felt. History, Prophecy, Biography, Gospel, Acts, 
Epistle, have that kind of common human interest 
in them which captivates the popular heart. The 
book is for universal man. 

It is a book of live issues. True, its Genesis is 
about men and things long gone by. But for that 
very reason some minds crave its instruction. 
There is a living present interest in some very old 
questions. All the living interest in astronomy 
to-day is about God's very ancient stars in his an- 
cient heavens. The interest in chemistry is about 
God's ancient laws, whereby so many parts of one 
element, no more, no less, chemically combine 
with just so many parts, no more, no less, of an- 
other element and go to form a new thing. When 
God puts his sign manual on a thing however old, 
be it star or book, the thing so stamped does not 
drop out of human interest. The ^^ living issues '' 
are not those of social reform, or political preference. 
They touch individual souls. The limits of any 
reform are found in the number of individuals 
whose hearts are reached and lifted, and who have 
lifting power on the community. Mount Wash- 
ington on its broad shoulders lifts the whole presi- 
dential range of the White Hills of New Hamp- 

76 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



shire. The living questions, the vital issues of 
freedom were met by our Lord when the civil 
reformers of Judea wanted him to take up their 
"burning question of civil liberty," and he bade 
them remember that true freedom was personal, 
was a matter of the soul, and was secured through 
discipleship. Striking deeper, rising higher, and 
spreading wider than any local question is the great 
question of sin and its Deliverer. This is the 
thought which throbs through this book, from the 
primal promise following hard after the primal sin 
to the second advent of the victorious Lord as he 
comes to add the "amen" to the completed ages 
of redemption. 

II. The method of the book is historical : a 
method having clearly its excellences and its de- 
fects. The defects, however, are such as can be 
remedied for the thoughtful reader. He has only 
to recall two simple facts. One of them is that 
there is to be a recognition of the special time in 
which each one of the books was written — the his- 
torical perspective. And the other is the fact of 
our duty in this century to bear in mind the prin- 
ciples and aims of the New Testament when one 
reads any portion of the Old Testament for de- 
votional purposes and for instruction in righteous- 
ness. 

No historic writer escapes the influence of his 
own age or vacates his own personality. For him 
to appear to do so would be suspicious. For him 
really to do so would be impossible. For he could 
not be understood in his own age if he used facts 
that had not been discerned or forms of speech 

77 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

not familiar. That such a writer is constrained and 
restrained by the literature of his time is certain. 
And the fact is a water-mark that evidences his 
truthfulness. He may quote a public historic 
document which, inexact for some purposes, is ex- 
act for his. He may use phrases current in his 
time, exactly as we do in our age, which will not 
bear a literal meaning. They may be linguistic- 
ally inexact, but they are the very phrases living 
men were using when he wrote. If he is a his- 
toric writer, and on that account obliged to name 
geographical facts, he is compelled by the limita- 
tions of his time to use the current geographical 
knowledge. That knowledge may have been, prob- 
ably was, defective. But there need be therefore 
no error in the religious use he makes of it. The 
facts, as he quotes them, are true for his purposes. 
If he used language founded on discoveries made 
only in these later centuries, the cry of fraud could 
be raised. The Bible writer never does that thing. 
To insist that the Bible shall be geographically 
exact according to the science of this age, is to 
make it other than an inspired book of religion. 
And a book of perfected science in geography, 
geology, astronomy, and ethnology would be very 
largely unintelligible even to us to-day. For the 
last word in any science is yet to be spoken. To 
ask that the Bible be perfect in its Hebrew and 
Greek forms of literary art is to ask that it be not 
a human production at all. It claims to have been 
written by men as well as inspired by God. And 
on every page it shows the stamp of a special age 
and the peculiarities of a particular man. It has 

78 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



not only perspective but personality. It has a dis- 
tinct local coloring and it has also a happy indi- 
vidualism. Literary imperfection, in so far as it 
exists, is absolutely consistent with moral and re- 
ligious perfection. Euclid, imperfect as poetry, is 
perfect as geometry. Homer, allowed to be im- 
perfect in his geography and history, at some 
points using large license, is yet claimed as ap- 
proaching perfection in a certain line of poetic 
excellence. 

The authors of the Bible have always the de- 
fects of their excellences, from the standpoint of 
literary judgment ; but this impairs neither their 
honesty nor their credibility in their own sphere of 
religion. And when in any court of justice, va- 
riety in the mental endowment or linguistic attain- 
ments of witnesses testifying to a fact under oath 
shall be held to invalidate testimony, then the same 
may be charged upon these biblical witnesses. 
To dwell largely on the errors of a man who is 
testifying in court because he uses a popular but 
inexact phrase; to object to his testimony because 
his words are not cast in the best mold of human 
speech, would show a lawyer who knew he had a 
poor cause and was raising dust to obscure justice. 
To attempt to impugn the veracity of a man be- 
cause in his testimony he speaks of the sun as 
"rising" or as "setting" on a given day would 
show not the exact jurist, but the shallow petti- 
fogger. 

And yet, though not intended to teach historic 
but religious truth, the side issues in the record of 
various national events even when incidentally 

79 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

named, are of a certain degree of value. And as 
the great aim of the book is to show how a given 
promise is fulfilled in the development of a certain 
family and afterward in a certain nation, the his- 
torical accuracy in these essential things is basal. 
Only we must remember that events are viewed 
phenomenally. The early history of the globe 
and of the creation of man could have had no 
eye-witness. The revelation of the facts afterward 
to men who should set them down for the world's 
belief may not be expressly scientific in form. 
The method seems to be optical, and the defects 
of such a method do not hinder it from being 
more truthful for mankind than mere scientific 
descriptions would be. For the defects of the 
purely scientific method are obvious as a medium 
of moral impression, and moral and religious im- 
pression by means of the facts is clearly the aim 
of the early historian. The phenomenal method of 
describing facts in nature has been held, even by the 
severest scientific critics, to be in some respects the 
more accurate. Principal Shairp, in his '^ Studies 
in Poetry and Philosophy," says that ^^Words- 
worth's descriptions of nature are never once at 
fault, though his method is never once scientific." 
Truth is true here from its own point of view, 
and from that only. Professor Proctor, writing 
of an eclipse, speaks of the value to science of 
the non-scientific method, and gives as an instance 
the fact that his wife, who saw the phenomena 
optically rather than scientifically, called his atten- 
tion away from the aspect he was noticing to cer- 
tain other and very important and characteristic 

80 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



facts. He terms this ** the true artistic faculty as 
distinguished from the scientific." This is the 
old Homeric method, and, as Proctor points out, 
it is the method of Genesis. 

As with Moses in Genesis describing the origin 
of earthly history, so it is with John describing its 
consummation. In such circumstances only the 
optical form is possible ; only the optical form is 
accurate ; only the optical form can be of religious 
use throughout the long centuries for which the 
book will live. The shifting scenes pass before 
the writer's vision. He records them as he sees 
them. There is absolute truth for the ends he has 
in view. 

As no living man sees the beginning so as to be 
able as an eye-witness to testify to the facts, so 
it is with the closing events of the world's history. 
In the Apocalypse the visions roll, like sunset 
clouds driven by storm winds, one upon another, 
until all you can say is that the west is aflame 
with gold and glory. By this method the grand 
impression is gained — perhaps no more was in- 
tended to be gained — that ** the kingdoms of this 
world are to become the kingdom of our Lord." 
Through the rifts of dissolving visions, as the 
scenes constantly change, there are bright glimpses 
of the heavenly world with its golden city, where 
are gathered forever the children of the kingdom. 
The closing of the Revelation is disappointing to 
those who apply to this book those methods of in- 
terpretation which are suited to other portions of 
the sacred word. Why should we not have in the 
Bible one book which is intended to impress and, 
F 8i 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

if you will, in some instances to overawe the mind. 
These visions roll on like thunder in the sky, and 
their use is to make men cry out, ''The Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth." They are true to their 
end, and closely examined, they commend them- 
selves as the wise methods of God. It is signifi- 
cant that we find the utmost of skill in dealing 
with a matter having the utmost of difficulty. 

Besides the phenomenal, we have also to notice 
the biographical method in dealing with human 
history. The true method of historical writing 
has lately asserted itself. It is substantially a re- 
turn to the old scriptural form of biographical 
narration. It looks through the eyes of a con- 
temporary man and sees the events as he would 
see them. It gets the gauge of a century, and 
the deeds then done are seen in their own light. 
Our best historians to-day are biographers. On 
the slender thread of historic order they string 
the events as seen by the representative men of 
an age. Macaulay and Motley and Prescott have 
chosen the method of personal portraiture as the 
most natural and philosophical, as well as the most 
artistic and accurate. The modern is the ancient 
and the scriptural method of historical writing. 
It allows the incidental to be recorded ; for an inci- 
dent lets us into the heart of things. It admits 
the trivial detail when that detail discovers to us 
the tendency of an age. It seems gossipy ; but so 
is Boswell's ''Johnson," which is the first biogra- 
phy in English literature, not only of a man, but 
of the men of his time. If this sort of work 
seems to lack stateliness it is not lacking in heart. 

82 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



And if it has the dramatic charm of the romance, 
it has none the less the self-evidencing tokens of 
genuine history. Nor is the method only bio- 
graphical ; it is even autobiographical. We have 
Moses telling us what Moses said. We have Ezra 
recording, with an artlessness that fascinates us, 
the movements alike of his heart and his hand. 
In the Ecclesiastes we have mental and moral 
autobiography : the history of a soul attracted by 
successive systems of philosophic thought, seduced 
by them each in turn, and then coming back from 
all these wanderings to rest in the conviction that 
the ** end of all wisdom is to fear God and keep 
his commandments.'' 

As to the Gospels of the New Testament, their 
word painting has always been praised. They are 
sketches of miracle, of teaching, which reveal 
Jesus Christ to us, as we could not have seen him 
in any other way. They are more than pictures. 
They are windows, crystalline in their purity, so 
that we look through them as at a scene transpir- 
ing just before our own eyes. And the strange 
thing is that in the absolute clearness of their 
narration we have an autobiography of the writers 
that does not in the least color their story. For 
these biographies of the writers are merely acces- 
sory to the grand personage about whom the chief 
interest is always seen to gather. Considered with 
reference to the purpose of the four Gospels, it is 
impossible to imagine a better method of giving the 
world a portraiture of Jesus Christ. There are 
other biographies in the Bible. But what if we 
are allowed to think of the biographies of the men 

^3 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

of Scriptural renown as so many studies toward the 
final delineation of our Blessed Lord? What if 
to each of those men was assigned the exemplifi- 
cation of a separate grace, which was to be con- 
veyed to some minor canvas ; and this always in 
preparation for the one great picture which assem- 
bles all excellences, and in which each virtue 
there traced is here brought out in undying per- 
fection ? To Christ the series all pointed. For 
Christ the series was preparatory. In Christ the 
series culminates. The great biography has now 
been written. The task, impossible before — im- 
possible alike in conception and execution — has 
been done. Plato's *^just man'' has lived, and so 
has been depicted. Placed in every situation, 
Jesus was stainless. These narratives of his life 
are faithfully written, so that his very words are 
often reported, his most familiar conversations not 
withheld, his private and public life alike spread 
out, and that too by disciples who were themselves 
opposites in temperament and each writing from 
his own impressions. These narratives are the 
standing miracle of all literature, even as his char- 
acter whom they describe is the standing miracle 
of all history. 

And as the form of the narrative is thus pictur- 
esque and impressive, is optical and phenomenal, it 
is in consonance with the facts themselves. They 
are literal and historical occurrences. But the mi- 
raculous cannot be scientifically, but only optically 
described. We can have the phenomena recorded 
in the case of a supernatural event precisely as in 
one which is only natural, and the record can be 

34 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



as trustworthy. For, that a given event is mirac- 
ulous is simply a deduction from facts which, from 
an optical point of view, can be as readily recorded 
as any other facts. Human language, making all 
allowance for its frequent inexactness, can record 
the miraculous facts evolved in the processes of 
God's revelation to man. 

But another of these alleged limitations, for 
which allowance is claimed in respect to the Old 
Testament especially, is the imperfect moral ideas 
of former ages. The Old Testament as a part of 
the Bible in which truth is less fully revealed, has 
been held, for that very reason, to be in some re- 
spects erroneous in its morality. So far as the 
claim has any justice, we must remember that it is 
our duty to read the Old Testament in the light of 
the New, when we read devotionally or ethically. 
It is our duty to throw the newer light back upon 
the older obscurity. That there was among the 
Hebrew nation great '^hardness of heart" about 
certain moral questions is at once granted. And 
the civil law admitted of some civil deviation from 
what would have been the highest moral standard, 
precisely as is done in civil law to-day all over the 
world. But the standard for the individual man in 
his moral and religious duty toward God was not 
thus lowered. The Ten Commandments are a 
moral standard for the individual man still quoted 
to-day. Christ's summary of the moral law for 
Christianity is the very summary made by Moses 
for the Hebrew nation. But when we would read 
the devotional books of the Old Testament, we are 
permitted to read into them our Christian thought. 

85 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Much that the Psalms say of their Jehovah we 
may say of our Jesus ; and that too by New Testa- 
ment warrant.^ The lack of the fullness of New 
Testament ideas in the Old Testament is not im- 
perfection, if considered in relation to the time 
when the Hebrew bards sang their songs and the 
Hebrew prophets spoke in trumpet tones to a 
delinquent people. 

It is true that some scholarly minds in a reac- 
tionary mood have made the most of these diffi- 
culties, obscurities, and objections. Getting as far 
as possible from any merely mechanical theory of 
the construction of the Bible, they have uncon- 
sciously magnified the limitations of the times 
when the successive books were written, and the 
human imperfections of the writers themselves. 
The manward side of the Bible has been all un- 
wittingly emphasized at the expense of the God- 
ward side. And words have been spoken about 
the errancy of the book which in many cases were 
unadvised. Reactions from traditionalism are as 
liable to mistake as any mere traditionalism can be. 
In attempting to show that some theories of inspi- 
ration are mistaken, the historic difficulties have 
been made to assume a prominence wholly unwar- 
ranted by a full and fair study of the facts. To 
insist that these things to which reference has been 
made are actual imperfections, to look upon them 
apart from their own historic setting, and therefore 
to speak of the errancy of the Bible, is an unwar- 
ranted and unhistoric use of words. These things 

1 Heb. I : 8. 
Z6 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



SO far from making the book untrustworthy, con- 
firm our faith in the accuracy of the volume. They 
show the peculiar aroma of the age, the flavor of 
the period when the books were written. Thou- 
sands of scholarly men who have carefully weighed 
the alleged instances of discrepancy, misquotation, 
and mistake of any sort whatsoever, making due 
allowance for the facts above named, can honestly 
say that not one of these things seems to be a real 
error ; nor by all of these things, is their belief in 
the Bible disturbed. They would unite in the 
comprehensive statement of Farrar : ^* Nor has the 
widest learning or acutest ingenuity of skepticism 
ever pointed to one complete and demonstrable 
error of fact or doctrine in the Old or New Testa- 
ment." 

But the thing to which this accuracy all minis- 
ters and in which it all culminates is the vital 
thought of man's redemption by the God of all 
grace through Jesus Christ. Schleiermacher says, 
" Christianity alone is the religion of redemption.'' 
It is the accuracy of its aim which becomes so 
conspicuous to a diligent student of the Bible. 
The book is a record of the genesis of the idea, 
of its steady development, and of its future suc- 
cess. If the redemptive process is not recognized 
the Bible is not really seen. If that process is 
unreal then the book is fictitious and is untrust- 
worthy. And equally is it true that if the Bible 
is untrustworthy the redemptive process, so far as 
any knowledge we have of it, is unreal. They 
stand or fall together for us. It might be possible 
to imagine some kind of a process of human re- 

87 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

construction as going on apart from anything we 
do really know. But a redemptive process with 
redemptive facts as a series culminating at Calvary, 
is unknown apart from the Bible. 

As we found our ^' primitive convictions '' 
touched by a Bible that stands next to them, so 
our profoundest needs as sinful men stand close to 
this redemption of the Scriptures. The primal 
promise recorded on the earliest pages of the 
Bible is just the acorn out of which grows the 
oak. The facts are strung on this golden string. 
'* Other bibles," says Dr. Harper in the ** Biblical 
World,'' *'are not only without the historic spirit, 
but they lack above all the religio-historic spirit of 
the Old and New Testament Scriptures." In the 
Bible the earlier facts all tend toward the Abra- 
hamic day. Nor had Abraham been the man he 
was had he not seen the day of the coming Christ. 
Every step of the development of the chosen 
family is toward one goal, and it is taken under 
the guiding providence of God. Even mistakes 
are overruled. There comes the same divine guid- 
ance for all the ancestral race. At length Moses 
is born and the law is given. A national life is 
created. New ideas of a peculiar redemption are 
constantly introduced. A moral nomenclature is 
established. The precision of the order is almost 
mathematical. The chain is unbroken. Other 
nations rise and fall. The ideas of other peoples 
drop out of existence, save as they incidentally 
contribute to the one ruling idea of God in con- 
nection with the chosen people. 

And now — mark it carefully — the record of all 

88 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



this series is unique. Not only is there a sense of 
God in the facts, but a sense of God in the story 
of them. The point of view of the Bible is as 
unique as is the vital thought and as is the series 
of facts. God's agency is everywhere seen. So 
far is this carried that men object to the record in 
our day because God is represented as doing so 
much in the Bible. The naturalist asks why more 
is not ascribed to law ; the ethnologist would have 
more said about the natural peculiarities of the 
various races; the secular historian would have 
more said about the secondary causes. The advo- 
cate of peace wonders that God is so often pre- 
sented as having to do with war, and, from this 
peculiar point of view, as sometimes its author. 
This unique way of ascribing everything to God is 
unknown elsewhere. God is in this book. He 
presides. His presence is seen equally in the 
event, in the point of view, and in the style of 
the record. It is God's book in this peculiar air 
and tone as is no other. The conception is of 
things as seen through God's eye. The things 
done are ascribed everywhere to him, even when 
other and evil agents are named as having the sec- 
ondary place. The method of seeing events is 
equalled only by the method of recording them. 
The two are one in warrant and aim. The thought 
takes its own divine way of expression. The point 
of view, alike in event and narration, is the eye of 
God. '^God saw," and **God said," and '^God 
did," are the forms after the first verse, where we 
read "God created." **Thus saith the Lord" is 
the usual prophetic phrase. Just how far the 

89 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

formula, '^Thus saith the Lord," covers the words 
that precede and succeed it, we may inquire farther 
on, when we come to inferences from our material 
so rapidly accumulating. Now and here, the facts 
of tone and tendency, shown in the drift of the 
book as well as the words themselves, are to be 
noted. The story is God's story when Moses and 
Isaiah and Daniel are speakers. This lofty outlook, 
this survey, as from a higher than human view- 
point, this divine way of conceiving of historic 
events and of telling the historic story is every- 
where evident. As distinctly as words can make 
it, the idea comes out everywhere of what God 
does, and what God says, and of how God rules 
and overrules. God is in the book as author and 
finisher as in no other. 

But not only is there the progress of events con- 
nected with the kingdom of God, and also the 
progress of the record corresponding thereto, but 
the redemptive process for single souls is provided 
for by the book. Its record of Old Testament 
and of New Testament facts has had a wonderfully 
converting power. Spiritual life in a human soul 
has been germinated from a single sentence, from 
a mere subsidiary clause in a verse of this record. 
Some single texts have a halo about them in 
Christian experience, such as the old painters were 
wont to throw about their heads of Jesus. This 
work thus begun in a human soul is powerfully 
forwarded by the same volume. So that we have 
the parallel facts of a series of vast world-wide 
events so dominated by God and so recorded as to 
exhibit the broad plan of a redeemed human 

90 



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nature ; and then, the equally certain facts of in- 
dividual redemption going on to its culmination, 
through a series of biblical events freshly applied 
by the Holy Spirit — facts for which we are in- 
debted to the Bible. Christianity is the developed 
idea of redemption in Jesus Christ for a man and 
for mankind. 

III. Then too, the relation of the New Testa- 
ment to the Old is peculiar. It is less that of 
addition than of expansion of view. In both there 
is one inspiring movement. 

From the shelves of an old library a student 
takes down an old schoolbook. Let it be a vol- 
ume on geology. It shall be the well-known text- 
book of forty years ago, bearing this title : " Ele- 
ments of Geology, by Edward Hitchcock, President 
of Amherst College." It was considered a most 
remarkable production in its day. It gathered up 
and expressed in happy forms the facts and their 
laws, as understood by the best scholars of that 
time. Its statements were singularly positive so 
far as they went, both as regards geological facts 
and geological doctrines. And yet that text-book 
reads strangely to-day. The great outlines of 
geology are unchanged. But a vast mass of new 
fact is now known, so that the outline then drawn 
is largely filled in by new explorers. The general 
theories of the old text-book are not exactly false, 
but they have been modified and enlarged, giving 
us a new science of geology. So that, as it now 
stands, no teacher in any American college would 
put that book before his students for class-room 
use. 

91 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

It would, however, be quite possible to take that 
old treatise of half a century ago and to re-edit it 
carefully chapter by chapter, to insert here a new 
paragraph, to add there an explanatory footnote, 
and then to issue the book in new form. The 
book in that case would serve a double purpose. 
It would give the latest results of the science and 
be also a history of its development. For a stu- 
dent to use the older text apart from the new would 
be as absurd as it would be misleading. It would 
be clearly his duty to read the new editing into the 
old text. If the text-book of the venerable Presi- 
dent of Amherst is wisely and modestly written, 
there are gaps to be filled, large spaces vacant for 
new facts ; theories tentatively held ; geologic doc- 
trines so stated as to admit of revision. For the 
good man never dreamed that noonday had come 
for his favorite science. He intended to leave 
large room for those who should take up the unde- 
cided questions and carry them on to more certain 
conclusions. 

Even if the learned author had had the presci- 
ence to know what we now know about geology 
he could not have written as a man would write 
to-day. The terms were not invented. The 
classifications were not made. The conceptions 
lacked fit words in which to express themselves. 
And even if that impossible thing could have been 
done, the strange book produced would not have 
been understood. Science cannot be forced; it 
must grow. The old text-book has indeed a value. 
The wise author wrote for his own time, though 
leaving wide spaces for those who should succeed 

92 



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him. And the student of to-day, instead of study- 
ing geology in the Hght of fifty years ago, must 
read the new editing into the old text. Nor would 
the case be in the least changed if the more mod- 
ern paragraphs and the extensive footnotes were 
separately printed under the name of their new 
author and editor. 

The supposition made about the text-book of 
geology, in a certain rough way illustrates God's 
plan in giving us the great text-book of religion 
which we call the Bible. And the method of the 
giver is never to be forgotten in the interpretation 
of the Old Testament. Except as a matter of 
curious interest, it is never to be studied by us 
apart from the newer revelation ; it is never, under 
any circumstances, to be interpreted by us apart 
from the New Testament. In the revulsion from 
the unintelligent conception held by some good 
but unscholarly men, that because a revelation, it 
is not a growth, in the reaction against the idea of 
some plain Christians in former times, that the 
Bible was ready-made in the skies and let down 
upon the earth, there is great danger that the op- 
posite extreme will be reached by some scholarly 
men, and that they will attempt to interpret the 
Old Testament solely in its own light. One ani- 
mated by a merely literary curiosity may well ask 
what the deeds it records would mean to those who 
saw them, and what the words would signify to 
those who originally heard them. And this 
method of study has a remote and indirect bear- 
ing upon the interpretation of the deed or the 
word. But when used alone, with reference to 

93 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

such a book as the Bible, it is a singularly defective 
method. The error of ignorance which would 
regard the Scriptures as a Chinese picture without 
perspective, is equaled only by the error of the 
critics who would spoil the painting by scraping off 
the colors to analyze the paints used by the painter. 
Let us guard ourselves against the narrowness of 
unscholarly men ; and equally, against the dogmat- 
ism of those who, in their specialty, forget related 
scholarship. Our changing human methods which, 
in each age, as we feel their trend, are in danger 
of swaying us unduly, are always to be subordi- 
nated to God's methods of interpreting the older 
Testament by the newer. 

And because in current discussions there is a 
tendency in some cases to deny the principle, in 
other cases not to give due emphasis to the New 
Testament thought as always to be used in the in- 
terpretation of the thought of the Old Testament, 
certain things need among us a fresh consideration. 

One of these things is that the Old Testament 
expects the New Testament as its interpreter. 
The Old Testament is not final. It is broader 
than other literatures ; but it is narrower than that 
to which it introduces us. To deny the prophetic 
element in the older Scriptures is not simply to 
make them merely human, but it is to reduce the 
human in them to the lowest possible terms. 

Every historical writer of any note is necessarily, 
in some degree and about some things, a prophet. 
He sets down facts with their natural tendencies. 
He becomes prophetic just because he is historic 
in his methods. It is a case in which to look back 

94 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



truly one must look forward wisely. To set down 
facts with date and place and circumstance is 
enough to make one an annalist but not a historian. 
At any one point of the past, a historian must 
trace the trend which made the next step of ad- 
vancing history a possibility. So that to deny the 
prophetic element altogether, is to deny the his- 
toric. There is movement in the Old Testament. 
There are far-off events to which this whole crea- 
tion of Hebrew literature moves. On the basis of 
the humanly prophetic there is engrafted the ex- 
pectation of the supernaturally prophetic. That 
something is yet to come for man's good is the 
universal hope. When Plato's divine man appears 
the golden ages will return. The prophet who 
was the prophet of man, becomes the prophet of 
God in the divinely guided development of Israel. 
The inspired facts of the Old Testament and the 
inspired order of them demand an inspired record 
of both the fact and the order, and, equally, an in- 
spired interpreter of them. The human inspiration 
in other ancient writings by which they live through 
the ages, is itself a kind of prediction that God will 
use divine inspiration for exhibiting these religious 
facts, both common and uncommon, in their divine 
ordering, for the instruction of men. All things 
in the Old Testament, even its history, look on- 
ward. They predict. They crave not only fulfill- 
ment, but its record in some worthy way. The 
Old Testament expects the New to supply its gaps, 
to explain its facts, to throw its moral light on 
what else were merely incident, to fill up its out- 
lines, to enlarge its hints, to lift its national into 

95 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

moral history, to bring its life and immortality out 
into light. The Old Testament needs, claims, and 
expects the New as its interpreter. Coleridge has 
told us that no man can understand the New Tes- 
tament but by the Old, nor the Old Testament 
but by the New. 

The peculiar forms of the Old Testament litera- 
ture require that it be read in the light of the New 
Testament. Take its Pentateuch. It gives us the 
history of the early world and of the early man. 
It is not intended as a record of the experiences in 
religion of these ancient worthies. It sees them 
in their relations to the early human society and 
to the development of the race as a race. It is 
more sociological than theological in its cast. 
Genesis, in its trend, becomes soon genealogical. 
It gives us the history of a family development ; 
and all things are seen as related thereto. It is 
the story of the ancestry of the Coming Man who 
is to undo the doings of the first man. All else is 
incidental. The story of creation is given, less to 
instruct us in geology, and more to show us how 
God prepared the earth for the race of mankind, 
out of which race should spring the Man. The 
incidents of early history are held in strict abey- 
ance to this plan. The early men of the race are 
named simply to show how they stand related to 
that which is to come in the wide scheme of things. 
There is a vast reserve. The author, evidently 
standing amid large material, omits more than he 
says, and holds himself with a certain severity to 
his great object in writing his book. It is the per- 
fection of the historical style; and it has been 

96 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



copied, perhaps unconsciously, by our modern his- 
torians. The old '^constitutional history" of 
Hallam is no longer written. In the newer style, 
as shown by Macaulay and Greene, biography 
illustrates the underlying thought of the age. And 
this method is the return to the method of Moses. 
An era is seen through the eye of its most promi- 
nent man. And, in turn, this style of picture- 
writing demands of the reader the sympathetic 
vision. Since the artist meets you only half-way, 
it is demanded of you that you supply what he 
purposely omits. 

But in a book addressed to us not only from the 
human but from the Divine mind as well, the unas- 
sisted man will fail to meet alike the human and 
the divine purpose. The New Testament, as the 
interpreter of the Old, needs to be in our hand or 
we miss much of the meaning. We must not fail 
to see the common trend in both. 

It might be thought that when we come on to 
Leviticus and Numbers, the law books and record 
books of Israel, we could study them solely in 
their own light. But it becomes plain that there 
is a reason for the minute directions in some of 
the institutions of the civil and the ceremonial 
law. Their nearest meaning was civil, to a Jew of 
that olden time. But is the civil worth of them 
the whole worth to us ? Let it be conceded that 
the Mosaic code is the basis of the science of juris- 
prudence. Is this all. that those laws can teach 
us in these Christian centuries ? Let the New 
Testament book which we call the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, make answer. There we are shown that 
G 97 



Inspiration considered as a trend 

the greatest value even of the ritual books, is their 
Christian worth to the Christian world; shown 
also that the ritual books are not to be interpreted 
by the meaning found in them by those to whom, 
in historical order, they were first addressed. It 
is the same with the prophetic books. Doubtless 
the nearest fulfillment of many prophecies was 
that which touched the Hebrew State and the 
surrounding nations. But these nearest fulfill- 
ments, which also are to be recognized, by no 
means cover all the meaning ; nor is the worth of 
them to those Hebrews their chief worth. That 
they spoke to the men of their times is true ; but 
that they addressed other ages than their own is 
the broader, stronger, larger fact. It was a New 
Testament man, quoting an Old Testament prophet, 
who added, ^^ these things were written for our 
learning." It is the annunciation of the trend. 

The one sufficient answer to those who claim 
that the events recorded in Genesis '' are not his- 
tory in our sense of the word history, but only 
generically and ideally true," is the New Testa- 
ment view of these Old Testament writings. Let 
this be noted, that the agreement of the two Tes- 
taments, when the older is seen in the light of the 
newer, their agreement as it is seen not only by 
our eyes, but through the inspired eyes of apostles 
and by the divine vision of the Master himself, 
forbids a style of criticism which vacates the Old 
Testament of its facts. These Old Testament 
facts are at one with the New Testament facts. 
They are the common property of both Testa- 
ments. Nor is it alone in the historical books that 

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we meet the peculiar form of literary and spiritual 
work which demands the New Testament as an in- 
terpreter. The Psalms are to us virtually Chris- 
tian songs, both by what we find in them and by 
what we rightly read into them. We have, in the 
first chapter of Hebrews, divine authority for read- 
ing Jesus for ^^ Jehovah," the ^' Son of God" for 
*'God" himself, in at least one Psalm. Farther 
on in this discussion, we may inquire how far the 
one instance warrants us to do the same in any 
other case where the similar thought of the psalmist 
can be better expressed in terms of New Testa- 
ment usage. Those glowing songs, in which the 
*^ Mercy of the Lord" is so exalted, seem some- 
times to ask us to liberate the thought from its 
former necessary restriction, and to solicit us to 
use, instead of that phrase, the name of the Christ 
of God who fills out the full measure of the divine 
mercy. In them all there is the same inspiring 
trend. 

In the Proverbs we have the concentrated and 
portable wisdom of the ages. And where the 
author of that book transfuses them with the 
"godliness" which stands in the recognition of 
the "fear of God" and the "wisdom of God," we 
do ourselves harm if we do not, in turn, complete 
the process Solomon began, and transfuse the 
worldly wisdom not only with Godliness but with 
Christliness. For Solomon to refuse to add the 
saving salt of religion, as he knew it, to the 
gathered sayings of the earlier ages, would have 
been a wrong as great as for us to neglect to 
read them in the light that shines for us from 

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INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

• 7 

that Christ ^^who is made unto us the wisdom 
of God." 

And this method of interpreting the thought of 
the Old Testament by that of the New, is equally 
far on the one hand from the crass literalism of 
the early Christian centuries, and on the other 
from the absurd allegorizing of the Alexandrians. 
The character sketches of Moses are not to be re- 
duced to mere object lessons on particular virtues ; 
nor yet regarded as a thin covering for philosoph- 
ical conclusions that, once drawn, leave little need 
for the facts themselves. The true method insists 
on the literalness of the events. It insists that 
the actual history be not spiritualized in any such 
way that the facts be evaporated on the one hand, 
nor yet on the other be made mere pegs on which 
to hang any man's theological or philosophical con- 
ceits. We plead for the interpretation of thought 
by thought. We insist that precisely the same 
thought and purpose were in the divine mind in 
giving the Old Testament as in giving the New ; 
that the New Testament thought was throbbing 
for expression in the Old ; and that it was uttering 
itself as far as the nature and purpose of the older 
'books and the restrictions of a historic develop- 
(ment would permit. 

And moreover we claim that God has provided 
ifor us, in these Christian centuries, some better 
'thing than was accorded to the men of the olden 
time, when we come to the interpretation of our 
Old Testament. And while we neglect no side- 
light of ancient history, no conclusions justified by 
philological and archaeological studies, we must not 

lOO 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



forget that all else is inferior to the sunlight of the 
gospel, in our search for the meaning of the older 
Scriptures. 

The Old Testament certainly contains hints and 
premonitions of the facts and doctrines of the New 
Dispensation. It starts with the assumption, com- 
mon even before the Mosaic era, of a God and 
of a soul, each related to the other and both doing 
moral work on a high moral plane. The two fore- 
most nations of the old civilization in the ante- 
Mosaic time both held these doctrines, as shown 
by historic tablets and papyri. The fact that the 
Mosaic documents are history, in our sense of the 
word history, may be denied by some Hebraists ; 
but Assyriologists and archaeologists insist that 
historic tablets and inscriptions, hundreds of years 
older than the Mosaic era, are veritable history. 
These ante-Mosaic authorities show that the old 
Assyrians and Egyptians believed in the two fun- 
damental facts of an eternal God and an immortal 
soul. The trend of belief now is toward the 
recognition of an original monotheism ; toward a 
belief that subsequently there was an introduction 
of local deities, and that the older was the purer 
faith. 

In such an atmosphere, Hebrew thought, always 
nimble among moral ideas, would be especially 
active on these themes. The Israelites, if they 
had not brought these ideas with them when they 
came down to Egypt, must have carried them 
away when they left that land. They were the 
commonest of ideas in the monarchy on the Nile. 
It was impossible for Moses, however vigorously 

lOI 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

he should hold himself to his historic purpose, not 
to give any hint or premonition of this universal 
belief of the civilization of his age. All words of 
his that bear on this subject are to be allowed, 
under these circumstances, their utmost weight; 
and interpretation is to make the most rather than 
the least of any incidental turns of expression, is 
always to favor the broader rather than the nar- 
rower meaning. Something more than the mere 
outlines of natural religion are to be expected from 
Moses, writing in such surroundings and among a 
people bred amid such beliefs. Shall we then be 
surprised that Moses represents man as mentally 
and morally perfect at the outset, with all which 
such a presentation carries with it ? We must not 
think of Adam as an overgrown boy, laboriously 
gaining religious knowledge as do our children. 
He was created in ^^righteousness and true holi- 
ness," i. e., in holy knowledge of the truth. This 
must have covered vastly more than the knowledge 
of what is popularly called natural religion or 
natural theology. He must have had not only the 
knowledge of sin but of redemption according to 
the primal promise. Only a part of this religious 
revelation made to Adam needed to be noticed in 
a historic book like Genesis. And we have the 
right to infer that the knowledge in which God 
created man, mentioned by Paul (Col. 3 : lo) as 
the typical fact of the renewing of regeneration, 
involved vastly more than is actually recorded. 
This knowledge comes out naturally in the state- 
ments concerning Enoch, the seventh son, who 
would be expected, according to ancient ideas, to 

I02 



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be the inheritor alike of Adam's genius for religion 
and of Adam's positive religious teaching. And 
Enoch, with a glance at the impending deluge, 
looks forward to the coming of the Lord as the 
Judge with his saints, who is to '* execute judgment 
upon all." He thus sees in grand outline the 
Christian dispensation, even as Abraham afterward 
saw a special event in it; the day of Christ's 
earthly glory. Bengel's comprehensive note is : 
** The first coming of Christ was foretold to Adam, 
the second to Enoch. Enoch looked forward 
beyond the deluge. For he speaks respecting all 
men and not to the antediluvians only. It is the 
earliest prophecy concerning the coming of the 
Judge." When Enoch is translated, the act 
becomes not only a palpable proof of immortality, 
but an endorsement of his elemental Christian 
teaching. The light thus flecks the morning 
dawn and touches soon the great mountain tops, 
as these men receive it and reflect it upon success- 
ive generations. The light shines onward from 
Adam and Enoch to the time of Noah, ^' preacher 
of righteousness." It shines on still from the ark 
on Ararat, type of salvation in all centuries, to 
Sinai ; and from Sinai on to the end of the wander- 
ing, when Joshua was visited by the " Captain of 
the Lord's host" — a* startling theophany. 

When the national history begins in Palestine, 
the public record may say little of the personal 
religious belief of the new actors on the scene, 
for that is not the purpose of the records. But 
from many a turn of the sentence in " Kings" and 
*' Chronicles " you may see what is everywhere 

103 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

assumed. The whole long history of Israel is set 
to this one musical idea. Beginning with the 
organ tone of Moses' ninetieth Psalm, tremulous 
with the harp-strings of David, and continued in 
the passionate strains of Canticles and the great 
trumpet peals of the post-exilic psalmists and 
prophets, we hear the grand chorus as it grows 
stronger and stronger, unto the full hallelujah of 
rapt expectancy and holy fulfillment. 

It is generally thought that the subject of the 
future life is left in a very vague and unsatisfactory 
state by the writers of the Old Testament. But 
men will always differ on the question of what 
should be expected on this subject from men in 
their position, writing with their purposes, and 
compelled by their place in a progressive scheme 
of revelation, to give only hints and intimations 
which subsequent writers were to enlarge and en- 
rich. It is not easy to put one's self in their 
place, and to estimate just how far there should be 
concealment and how far revelation. Persons with 
little power of historic perspective complain 
greatly of this supposed lack, and wonder not a 
little, that while all the great nations of antiquity 
had so much to say about the future life, the He- 
brews had so little. Perhaps the trouble is in the 
vision of the beholder. He may not be able to 
shade his eyes from our superabounding light suf- 
ficiently to form a correct estimate of their posi- 
tion. But some students of the Old Testament do 
not so feel. And they think that as much promi- 
nence is given to the subject of the future life as, 
under the circumstances, could be expected. 

104 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



They name the frequent references to Sheol. 
They are not willing that the words '' gathered to 
his people " should refer only to bodily burial. 
They take Job's confession to be, not indeed a full 
proof -text of the resurrection, but an expression of 
confidence that, in another world, if not in this, 
God will vindicate him, thus assuming rather 
than declaring the future life — a method of proof 
even stronger under certain circumstances than 
more positive declarations. They cite the six- 
teenth Psalm in which there is the same confident 
assumption of *'rest in ^ hope," in any world. 
Stronger still is the seventy-third Psalm — a psalm 
which expects to see the glory in the heavens 
where God abides. They cite the thirty-second, 
the forty-sixth, and the ninety-first Psalms as im- 
possible utterances for one who does not believe in 
a future state. They cite also the four distinct 
utterances in the prophetic books about the resur- 
rection. And the fact that two of them, Hosea 6 
and Ezek. 37, are used allegorically of the nation, is 
among the best proofs that all men knew and be- 
lieved in the doctrine of a bodily resurrection, 
from which such graphic figures were derived ; 
while Isaiah's direct declarations, ^^ Thy dead shall 
live ; my dead body shall rise," would seem to 
leave nothing wanting as to Hebrew belief 
(Isa. 26 : 19). The poetic form is thought by 
some to be stronger than any prose statement, as 
a proof of the universal acceptance of the resur- 
rection idea among the Hebrews. 

But even if these utterances are not given their 
full weight, and if it be claimed that, taken alone, 

105 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

they do not satisfy, this is certain, that they mean 
something ; that they are contributions toward an 
end. Nor are they ever to be taken alone. The 
doctrine of another life in the Old Testament ex- 
pects the larger unfoldings of the new dispensa- 
tion. From that other life is to come the Christ. 
When he comes, it is fit that the shadows shall 
flee, that the hope shall be changed to fruition. 
Meantime hints and premonitions must do their 
work. The Messianic revelation is that for which 
all else waits. *^ Life and immortality are brought 
to light '' in him. Beautiful is the figure and 
strong is the thought. Life and immortality are a 
treasure hidden in the recesses of some deep, 
dark cave. These are jewels that only a few ex- 
plorers have found. These few explorers never 
saw the gems except by dim torchlight. Men 
have come to believe that, in this cavern, these 
gems abide the finding. At some time they will 
be seized upon and all will see them. Jesus 
Christ has gone within. He has explored the 
cavern. He has brought out the jewels which 
were believed to be there, and he has held them 
up in the sunlight for all men to see. '^ He hath 
brought life and immortality to light in the gospel." 
We may also look back a moment to the 
time when the redeeming idea began to exhibit 
itself. It was at the hour of the primal promise, 
*^the protevangelium, or the First Gospel," as Co- 
nant calls it. But this earliest promise is only the 
seed of things. It gets itself enlarged. As full 
a gospel as we should expect at its time, it grows 
in force and breadth. The successive writers of 

io6 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



the Old Testament continually read into the primal 
promise their better meanings. In their use of 
this primal promise, they instruct us how to use 
our better gospel light. They read into it con- 
stantly from their own broader views, as they come 
on in the world's history. And so they authorize 
us to deal with their deliverances as they dealt 
with those older than their own time. See how 
grandly they do this thing. They begin with the 
words : '^ The seed of the woman shall bruise the 
serpent's head," i. e.y the hurter is to be hurt by a 
stronger hurter, and the race delivered from the 
hurting. The idea broadens. At length the world 
is ready for the idea of redemption through a re- 
deemer as shown in the Mosaic rites. The world 
waits, but the one for whom it waits is to be a 
prophet. At length he is to be the ^' Captain of our 
salvation," i, e.y a Saviour ; at length he is the King ; 
farther on he is the '^Messiah" ; "The Lord our 
righteousness"; "The Prince of peace"; "The 
Root and Offspring," i, e,, the sire and son " of 
David." The redemptive idea, the saving idea, is 
ever conspicuous ; and to it all other ideas come 
at length to do obeisance. Each inspired man 
reads into the growing conception the thought of 
his own time ; each illumines it with the light God 
grants to his age; each gives it vigor, breadth, 
beauty, and glory. It is the one redemptive 
thought expanded, enriched, adorned. Why should 
we fail to do with our New Testament light what 
those men did in their dimmer day — interpret the 
older by the newer thought, and find more and 
more, in that older revelation, of the truth always 

107 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

there, but always waiting to be discerned by the 
better New Testament vision. 

This tendency is everywhere revealed. We see 
it in the inspiring thought that gives the two-fold 
book a single aim. And we see it as well in the 
very unique structure of the two Testaments as 
they act and interact, as they look forward and 
backward, as they assist each other and expound 
each other. There is organized thought and organ- 
ized form. There is majesty in the march of the 
volume. God is in its every part. The inspired 
thought reaches even the form. You could not 
have a speech by Daniel Webster, even at a cattle 
show, that did not betray the Websterian trend. 
Not a sentence but has the Websterian march and 
manner. The statesman was everywhere manifest 
to those who had known his great political ideas 
and who could feel the power of those majestic 
words in which he clothed his thought. So, if 
larger matters may be illustrated by smaller, it is 
in some sense with God's ever-present thought of 
human redemption. It was clear in his own mind 
and it sought as clear expression back at the 
time of the primal promise as it did when in the 
ripe hour Christ came to our world. 

But it could not be fully expressed in that age. 
The thought knew no change. It was just as strong 
in Abraham's attempted offering of Isaac, as strong 
in every ordained rite of the temple service. It 
throbbed in every psalm, and strove for fuller utter- 
ance in every prophecy. The thought is always 
present if we .but had eyes to see it, if there were 
but light in which m_en could use their clearer 

io8 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



Christian vision. We ought to do it. We can in- 
deed, when studying any historical book of the 
Bible as mere history, shut off for the hour the 
Christian light, as men in daytime descend into 
a well to see from its depths the stars of the upper 
sky. But to do that is not to interpret such a book 
as the Bible. That is to use it as a merely literary 
volume, to use it for a kind of class-room exercise m 
history, as one would use Macaulay or Prescott. But 
the divine heart-beat is the great thing in the Old 
Testament, and interpretation is the liberation of the 
divine thought from its restriction. It can be done, 
not by our going back behind it, but by our going 
on to the better expression as furnished in the 
gospel dispensation. The thought is there though 
partially veiled. It is ours to discover it and 
bring it from the age of the shadow into the age 
of the sunlight. 

What is said of the Mosaic ceremonial is just as 
true of the Mosaic and the post-Mosaic facts, 
*^ which things were a figure of the true.'' The 
old facts needed the new facts for their comple- 
ment and the old record needs the new for its 
interpretation. And so it is our duty to read 
into the older story the thoughts of the better 
time. The inspiring Spirit is the same in both 
volumes. Nearly eighty times the Holy Spirit, 
under the name ^^ Spirit of the Lord" or "my 
Spirit '* is named in the Old Testament. He is 
also the promised Agent to lead into all truth in 
the composition of the New Testament. In the 
Old Testament he is the Spirit of prophecy, in the 
New he is the Spirit of fulfillment. 

109 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

The peculiar interpretations of the Old Testa- 
ment given by Christ and his apostles are very 
significant. There are a few instances of direct 
quotation by word. There are more instances of 
quotation by fact. It is noteworthy that our Lord 
so quotes as to endorse incidentally those very facts 
about which such questionings have been made in 
our own century. The story of the temptation in 
Eden, the story of the serpent raised in the wilder- 
ness, and the story of Jonah — the three incidents 
most controverted — are not only named, but are 
struck through and through, in our Lord's dis- 
course, with gospel thought. He uses them not as 
foreign illustrations, as one might quote from the 
incidents of Greek and Roman history, but they 
are for him a luminous outline gospel of the olden 
time, which those men he addressed should have 
seen and so by this vision of them should have 
been prepared for his gospel. The constant thought 
of Christ is that the Jews ought to have known 
these things in their moral meaning, so as to have 
been ready to receive him. The reproach is that 
they did not see the divine side of these earthly 
things ; how then could they see the heavenly 
things he came to disclose ? They would not read 
into the older part of their revelation the truths of 
their newer prophets. They saw only ordinary 
history where they should have seen religious truth. 
They saw bare fact where they should have seen 
living and inspiring revelation. Christ's whole 
nomenclature, as well as his mode of thought, is 
founded on the Old Testament. 

The process is always a reading of New Tes- 

IIO 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



tament ideas into Hebrew fact, the enlargement 
of Hebrew thought into Christian conception. 
Take the fall of man as given in Genesis. In 
twelve well-known passages Paul shows what that 
fact means as seen in the light of the New Testa- 
ment. It is even more impossible in Paul's case 
than in Christ's, to understand a merely literary 
allusion in which the old facts serve to illustrate a 
truth. For while Jesus sees facts as moral truths 
incarnated, Paul founds arguments upon the facts. 
He sees in them parts of a comprehensive system 
of things. So that were the Old Testament story 
of the fall not a fact, or not one in a great series 
of facts, it would make Paul's arguments not 
merely fallacious, but puerile. It is certain that 
the author of the book of Hebrews reads New 
Testament ideas into the Old. 

It may indeed be urged that he is dealing with 
symbols, a method of dealing warranted in inter- 
preting the symbols of the Mosaic ritual. But the 
method of interpreting thought by thought, rather 
than the symbolic method, is also used by the 
writer of the Hebrews when he leaves the ritual 
law and comes to Hebrew history and Hebrew 
heroes. In such cases he also adopts the method 
of the other New Testament writers. 

And this way of using the Bible sheds some- 
what of light on the vexed question of the quota- 
tions in the New Testament from the Hebrew 
Scriptures. Sometimes the quotation is direct, 
word for word. Sometimes it would seem to be 
incorrect, except for a word or two in the verse 
quoted. But when we recall the Hebrew style of 

III 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

thinking, which is largely by parallelisms, some- 
what of the difficulty departs. Parallels in 
thought, parallels in trend, parallels in related 
theme, are named. The argument for the Messiah- 
ship of Jesus as one who fulfills an ancient proph- 
ecy by the act of coming up out of Egypt is 
not one at first especially evident to Occidental 
minds. But the two facts of Israel's departure 
from Egypt and Mary's departure from Egypt with 
her child Jesus in her arms are exactly that kind 
of parallelism which an Oriental would regard as 
an argument in Christ's favor. Similar trends in 
fact show to him unity of thought. They are 
overlapping circles. They are a part of one series. 
They are links of one chain. Is then such an 
argument a logical fallacy ? Yes ; if there is no 
common trend of thought in the two Testaments, 
and if the idea of the New Testament is not there 
in the Old Testament waiting to be brought out 
in the better light. Interpret by symbol, interpret 
by ordinary forms of quotation, and the logic does 
not always appear. Interpret by thought — thought 
equally in both, but in one restricted in expression 
and longing for liberation and utterance — and the 
logic is of the highest order. 

To this method of interpretation there is one 
objection. It seems at first to open the door to 
all fanciful interpreters. They can read into the 
written word any conceit that rules an unregulated 
mind. But this objection confounds things that 
differ. There are rites in the ritual law that de- 
mand the symbolical method, and the restriction of 
that method to these symbols is clearly demanded. 

112 



THE GATHERED MATERIAL 



Imaginative men have gone through the whole 
Old Testament with their symbolic interpretation, 
to the disgust of all sober minds. The method 
which is now defended is exactly the opposite of 
that. It gives no room for lawless fancy. It uses 
simply the search-light of New Testament thought 
and so finds everywhere the rudiments of New 
Testament ideas. Its process is that of seeking 
the everywhere-present, unifying thought. It has 
the vital eye. It sees through connections. It 
finds the whole book dominated by one divine 
trend. It discerns Christ in all the sacred volume. 
Pentateuch and Prophecy, Psalm, Gospel and 
Epistle, are all witnesses to him. The unique 
book, in its growth as a revelation, in its spirit and 
its methods as an inspiration, is not only a book of 
human genius, but of heavenly origin. 



H 113 



CHAPTER III 

THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 

In a former chapter the inductive method of in- 
vestigation was described as one method, though 

by no means the only one, of in- 

Section I. vestigatins; the subject of inspi- 

The Contents of 4.- ^^ ^ ^i: ^ 

th Ph * t* ration, u e come now to that 

Exper?encr ^^^hod described by Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton, when he says, 
" Experimental knowledge is given us by experience 
and observation and is not obtained as the result of 
inference or reasoning." Jovans says, '^ Let us 
investigate these instincts of the human mind by 
which man is led to work as if the approval of a 
Higher Being were the aim of life. Phenomena 
demand explanation. Of the scientific method, the 
first law is that whatever phenomenon is, is. . . 
We must ignore no existence whatever. Are we 
to record other phenomena and pass over this ? '' 
If on some day when the sun does not shine, it 
were required of us to prove by what we see that 
the sun really exists, we should turn at once to the 
world of nature and see what the sun has done on 
other days when it shone on the world. We might 
take some bright flower, all the hues of which are 
just so much concentrated sunlight ; and if w^e 
could first give it sensibility and then a voice, it 

114 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



would tell US whence all its colors came. It would 
be possible to find out the fact of a sun — to dis- 
cover some of its qualities, some of its potencies, 
some of its activities. In like manner, it is the 
virtue of the experimental method that it will ex- 
amine spiritual results; that it proposes to see 
what there is in the contents of the Christian con- 
sciousness that testifies to the reality of this 
alleged inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures. 

The experimental method in physics proceeds by 
tests upon physical material. The experimental 
method in all matters of morals proceeds by tests 
upon spiritual material. If God is Father, man 
has in the faculties of sonship that which must 
reflect the Father's methods in any inspiration. 
The one must be the counterpart of the other. 
The *'mind of the Spirit" will be, in some meas- 
ure, reproduced in the mind of the spiritual man. 
In the flower you can read the sun. In the natural 
faculty you can read something of spiritual truth. 
But when this natural faculty becomes illuminated 
by the '^Spirit of God," the reading is more dis- 
tinct. The spiritual man will know the things of 
the Spirit of God; for they are spiritually dis- 
cerned. Not that the mirror is perfect. But to a 
certain extent and in its own way, it is a trust- 
worthy reflector. The contents of the Christian 
consciousness must reflect the consciousness of 
God, to a degree, on any moral matter ; and espe- 
cially on this matter of divine inspiration. True, the 
mirror is far from flawless. In some cases it is 
sadly blurred. But if God's restoring grace shall 
come to any man's soul, the imperfections in part 

IIS 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

at least will be removed, and man's soul, like man's 
reason, will be, within its own sphere, a proper 
subject for our study. 

We use this consciousness, also, as we use the rea- 
soning powers which, though not perfect as instru- 
ments, are of inestimable value in this discussion. 
We take the method of induction, ^^ which," says 
Mill, ^*is the operation of discovering and proving 
general propositions." In like manner we may use 
the methods of ^^experimental inquiry," so loudly 
praised by Hamilton. In any single method of 
studying so large a question, there are limitations. 
We may overstep the line of sobriety whatever our 
method. But guarding ourselves against these 
dangers as best we may, let us examine by this 
method some of these reflected rays of divine in- 
spiration as they are given us in Christian con- 
sciousness. 

It will be necessary that we do not regard these 
testimonies of experimental religion as primarily 
coming from man himself. There is a secondary 
rainbow in the sky after the shower, which depends 
solely on the primary bow. It comes when the 
primary bow comes, stays while it stays, goes when 
it goes. This secondary bow has no existence in 
itself apart from the primary bow. We are search- 
ing not for some human faculty which is a sun, but 
for some capacity to receive the beams of the true 
sun and reflect them. A candle is not necessarily 
lighted. It is simply capable of being set on fire 
and of giving out light. Jesus said of himself, 
*'I am come a light into the world." To his dis- 
ciples he said, ''Ye are the light of the world." 

ii6 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



Those men were not original lights. They were 
simply capable of being touched into light by him- 
self. He is ''the true light that lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world " who will receive 
him. To think of all men as inspired is to think 
of inspiration as the prolific source of unnumbered 
errors. Capacity to give light is not light itself. 
Besides, this light is always represented as com- 
municated. Whatever of light from personal 
faculty God gives to the natural man is not to be 
considered here ; for the inspiration of which we 
are inquiring is not that of man's inspiration, but 
that of God's inspiration. And our whole investi- 
gation is concerning the latter inspiration as be- 
stowed upon the men who have given us the books 
of the Bible. 

And yet the strange claim that, because of the 
divine immanence, all men are divinely inspired, 
even though not accepted, is not without its worth 
to us. It shows that the belief that somebody is 
divinely illuminated is still an article of human 
faith. Men believe that the light is over and 
above that of mere human faculty. The admission 
is a fair starting point for an argument. It shows 
that there are preparation, anticipation, and ex- 
pectation of inspiration. The experimental method 
begins by recognizing this foregleam in the 
eastern sky. When to capacity for inspiration in 
man is added this innate expectation, the way is 
clear for looking about us and asking who and 
where are these specially inspired men. Here is a 
prophecy. Somewhere, not far away, must dwell 
the prophet. Says Fairbairn, in his " Place of 

117 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Christ in Modern Thought '' : ^^ The idea of a writ- 
ten revelation may be said to be logically involved 
in the notion of a living God. Speech is natural 
to spirit. If God speaks it will be through a 
written revelation ; and this does not simply mean 
a store-house of the best thought of the best 
minds." Men not distinctively religious thinkers 
admit the possibility of a revelation from God 
containing truth which otherwise could not be 
known. In such a case, where a revelation from 
God is so much needed, the possibility becomes a 
probability. It even advances to a warranted an- 
ticipation. And we ask instinctively, where is this 
book that we are authorized to expect ? There is 
a legitimate outreach and uplift of waiting hands 
to receive the volume. In some material way, as 
well as by the direct impact of spirit on spirit, 
men have expected God to reveal himself. The 
prophet has a roll. The sayings of the book are 
sealed. The sign-manual of God is expected and 
is bestowed. 

There are men who have had the inspired con- 
sciousness. That some have pretended thereto 
who were either deceived or deceivers is only a 
testimony to the breadth and strength of the in- 
nate conviction that God somehow, at some times, 
and in some ways, speaks to men. Just what this 
inspired consciousness is none of us can know 
since none of us have experienced it ; nor do we 
need to know it. The nearest possible approach 
for us to it, is in those exalted moments when 
spiritual souls are given to see into the depth and 
glory of some passages of the divine word. It is 

ii8 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



soul meeting soul experimentally. We begin to 
see as Moses and David and Peter and John and 
Paul saw the truth they were told to give to the 
world. In those hours these words of the Scrip- 
ture are spirit and life. They carry with them 
their own evidence. If there were any way of 
collecting all these correspondences between the 
word as written and the word as experienced in its 
unfoldings, would there be a single spiritual dec- 
laration of the Bible that remained unverified ? 
Each spiritual soul has had a few of these revela- 
tions of spiritual insight into the inspired word. 

And here comes out the remarkable fact that a 
very considerable part of the Bible is itself experi- 
mental. It consists of the record of the effects of 
truth upon the mind and conscience and heart of 
inspired men. You get, here and there, the in- 
spired norm of truth as it appeared to God him- 
self ; but, more frequently, we have the reflection 
of this inspired norm upon the mind and heart of 
the writer. As, for instance, in the Ten Command- 
ments you have God's own thought — the purest 
truth ; and in the Psalms and Prophecies you have 
the experimental echo of it on the minds of the 
psalmists and the prophets. The record of both 
forms of inspiration is equally inspired. But the 
question always arises as to the stress to be given 
to each. Both are sure enough to be depended 
on as inspired truth. But truths are relative in 
importance. It is the same with inspired facts. 
You have the atonement on the cross — a central 
event in the moral universe ; and you have also on 
record the inspired impression which the fact 

119 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

made upon the mind and the heart of Paul; the 
inspired reasonings in which he indulged in view 
of the fact of divine redemption. But the fact 
itself must always be larger than any reasonings 
upon it ; for it has applications far wider than any 
reasonings can reach. And while the reasonings 
are as really inspired as is the fact, the inspired 
fact is of higher grade than any inspired reason- 
ings about it can possibly be. So that there are 
ranks and ranges of inspiration in God's word. 
There are truths that are divine norms. The Ten 
Commandments are such. They are normal to all 
the civil and ritual institutions elsewhere and after- 
ward established. The twentieth of Exodus gives 
us those '^Ten Immortal Words." The subse- 
quent chapters give us the ceremonial law. The 
record is just as much inspired in the one case as 
in the other. But how different the revelation in 
its contents and worth. In one, the unchanging 
moral law ; in the other, the transient ordinance 
now a mere matter of human history. The teach- 
ing of Jesus about the new birth is the norm of 
the new gospel kingdom. But Paul's epistles ad- 
dressed to the men who have experienced this new 
birth, show the experimental side of the same 
normal truth. In this case the inspiration secures 
the perfect record of an inspired thought gener- 
ated in a human soul in view of the normal state- 
ment. And the measure of the statement is neces- 
sarily broader in the one case than in the other. 
But the human experience, instead of being a 
source of weakness, is so saturated and guided, so 
touched and so sanctified, — in one w^ord, is so in- 

I20 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



spired, — that it is made a grand source of strength 
and a sure word of God's sending and endorse- 
ment. This experimental rehgion, found every- 
where in the Bible, running through its history 
which is largely biography, as well as its didactic 
portions, is one reason for the hold of the book on 
spiritual souls. It voices their feeling. It fur- 
nishes them with the very words for their prayer 
and their song. It writes for them their creed. It 
gives wings to their hope. It endears to them the 
whole volume. For while the experience of a man 
to-day would not, all alone, verify a historic fact, 
such as the raising of the serpent in the wilder- 
ness, it would incline one to accept the fact as 
harmonious with the whole trend of a divine re- 
demption. Not that a fact can be proved alone by 
feeling. But the sympathetic soul finds it more 
easy to believe the evidence obtained by the his- 
toric method, because of the moral meaning of the 
alleged fact. Through the whole Bible, fact and 
doctrine and experience are so thoroughly inter- 
woven that, like the seamless robe of Jesus, sepa- 
ration into parts is impossible. They are one. 
This warp must have that woof to make up the 
one unique fabric. 

And thus it comes about that many Christians, 
finding by their personal faith in some special 
promise of Christ that they receive special spir- 
itual blessing, feel persuaded that this one promise 
is connected with the whole contents of the Scrip- 
tures. They have tested the word in the only way 
in which they are capable of testing it. They 
have not the historic knowledge to judge of evi- 

121 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

dences open to other men more fortunately situated. 
They have proved what they were capable of prov- 
ing ; and their reasoning is that these promises, 
involving as they do the essential facts of the 
biblical story, have become experimentally true. 
These are the evidences which to them are the 
most satisfactory. The spiritual reason has its 
place as well as the logical. The heart has its 
evidences as well as the head. Its processes 
differ, but its conclusions are as valid. It were 
better that the intellectual method should be used 
as well as the experimental. But for untold mil- 
lions of men, good judges if allowed their own 
methods of getting at results on all moral as well 
as on all religious questions, this experimental 
method must always have large prominence. It 
was that proposed by Jesus himself. He says 
that if any man wills to do his will he shall know 
of the doctrine. And all these men not only 
admit, but earnestly claim some sort of inspiration 
for the Bible. They rest in it as in no other book. 
They quote it as the one infallible rule of faith and 
duty. They give it instinctively the place of an 
inspired volume. No man, though using the most 
logical processes, can afford to ignore this great 
spiritual fact of the experience of untold millions 
of the human race. To attempt to account for it 
by traditional belief is absurd. To trace it to 
education is equally so. Thousands of these men 
had put off all the influences of early education 
and lived godless lives. But they were met by the 
truth of the gospel, and changed in all their mode 
of thought and feeling. There was a power in 

122 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



the book that did this thing. They are certain 
that the book has God's seal of inspiration upon it. 
And all this is true because of the underlying 
trend in the volume itself. Its own unity is se- 
cured by the inspiring Spirit that runs through it. 
The trend is one, and it is everywhere. It is 
found in all biography and history, all psalm and 
proverb, all prophecy and epistle. More distinct 
than the localism that betokens the special age of 
the writer, is the universality of the great thought 
that throbs and thrills. There is beginning, mid- 
dle, and end. The path never turns aside. The 
facts never get out of their place in the series. 
The peculiar *' making for an end" is never want- 
ing which secures the dependence and interdepen- 
dence of the single parts ; each is for the other 
and all make for one grand goal. And so the logic 
of Christian inference which finds one set of facts in- 
volved in another, and which, by the vital eye, sees 
correlative and agreeing truth, and through sym- 
pathetic affiliation makes the Bible one book, has 
due warrant in this special tendency everywhere 
seen. It gives room for Christian confidence. 

It is sometimes urged that the argument for the 
authenticity and inspiration of the Bible which is 
drawn from the experience of 
Christians, while it may suffice ^4r*^^?^n\, . 

for them, is without weight to The Worth of this 
^, , , , .1 . >., . Experience as 

those who have not this Chris- a^^..-^^-^*. 

-n , . , 1 ^ an Arffument 
tian consciousness. But is that 

so ? Here is a vast mass of testimony. It is 
drawn from the consciousness of thousands whose 

123 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

testimony on any other subject would be entitled 
to credence. This testimony is of intellectual 
worth to the men who have not had the experience 
themselves. Thousands have not had experience 
in recovery from a given disease. They have not 
been cured by a given specific. But there is a 
vast mass of testimony as to the effect of aconite 
and of quinine and of nux vomica as drugs, and of 
the benefit, under certain conditions, of stimulants. 
]\Iedica] men, on the basis of this testimony, write 
learned volumes on diseases and their treatment. 
They accept the testimony of other men's ex- 
perience. They ought to do so. Experience of 
others may be in some cases more valuable and 
trustworthy than one's own. You may be a better 
obser\^er of the course of a fever in your friend 
than in yourself. Testimony as to experience is 
everpvhere received and given its place as of more 
or less worth. Xor can all these long centuries of 
Christian experience be ignored by those not them- 
selves Christians. It is nothing to the point for 
one to say that he has had no such experience. 
The negation of experience in one man counts for 
nothing as against the positiveness of another 
man's experimental knowledge in religion. But 
the man who has not had the experience himself 
is bound to give credence to the facts to which 
others testify. Facts of experience are as sub- 
stantial facts as we know, and a man may no 
more set them aside than he may dismiss the facts 
of gravity in his study of the physical world. 

It is sometimes said by way of disparagement, 
that this experiential consciousness is mere feeling. 

124 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



It is enough reply to say that feeling is just as real 
a fact as the existence of a piece of granite. 
Feeling is one of the potencies of life. Love, 
that rules the world, is a feeling. It is the grand- 
est, surest, most substantial factor in human con- 
duct. What a man loves is the main thing about 
him. Love is character, bad or good. Think of 
a man attempting any analysis of human history 
in a nation or of life in a man, with no reference to 
the fact that love is a power that sways men pro- 
foundly. At the last analysis states of mind, such 
as love and hate, joy and sorrow, hope and despair, 
are the most certainly known of all our human 
knowledge. And so far from a disparagement, we 
claim it as one of the surest of evidences that 
Christian souls, thrilled with love to God, have 
this experimental conviction that the Bible is an 
inspired volume. It has been wrought in them 
most centrally, has been ascertained by them in 
the depths of their own being. And no man of 
a philosophical turn of mind can afford either to 
ignore or to neglect this vast amount of testimony. 
The contents of the human consciousness, when 
this consciousness exists in the purest form — that 
of Christian consciousness — cannot fail to be of 
immense importance to every careful student of 
the question of inspiration. These persons are 
the most competent of all men to give testimony 
on this matter. "He that is spiritual judgeth all 
things." 

In questions of music we give special weight to 
the opinion of the musician. In questions about 
mathematics we consult the man of mathematical 

125 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

genius and attainment. We make use everywhere 
else of specialists. Why not give here in our in 
vestigation of the spiritual fact of inspiration an 
especial importance to the testimony of spiritually 
minded men ? 

The experimental method alone may not satisfy 
some investigators. Like the inductive method, 
it has its limitations and its liabilities to mistake, 
when it is employed exclusively. But this at 
least is clear, that its trend, like that of the in- 
ductive method, is unmistakable. It is a factor in 
the problem. Certain minds are so constituted 
that, in regard to the inspiration of the Bible just 
as in regard to the existence of God, the profound 
inward conviction is that on which they rely most 
confidently. In these minds the logic of the heart 
is more nimble than the logic of the head. Nor 
are such men necessarily the least intellectual. 
What mind more logical than that of Paul ? When 
a revelation by inspiration of God was made to 
him on the way to Damascus, his heart yielded at 
once. But he must retire for three years into 
Arabia to adjust his intellectual convictions to his 
new moral feeling. His head must now become 
reconciled to his heart. The most logical mind of 
the Scriptures, he is converted through the emo- 
tions, in view of a divine intervention. The 
revelation of Christ to him on the way to Damas- 
cus is the first of a series of inspirations for his 
soul; and the successive inspirations of God's Holy 
Spirit are given us in his Epistles, as he speaks 
the words which are freely given him of God. 

Multitudes of young men have been converted. 

126 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



Some of them have failed to adjust the head to 
the heart ; and so have become confused about 
reHgious fact and doctrine. They have let the 
certainties of individual experience stand in the 
background, while they have attempted to decide 
on the truth by mere logical processes. It is as 
if a man should resolutely close his eyes and seek 
to know all the things about him in the physical 
world by the sense of touch alone. Let him 
not ignore the use of his eyes because he has 
hands. God gives the various senses that we may 
correct and confirm the one by the other. It is 
unwise to refuse the testimony given us by any of 
them. It were better to secure everything we can 
from each as we use them all. 

And many, converted through spiritual processes 
in early youth, have gone on to verify, by subse- 
quent intellectual processes, the great convictions 
of a regenerated soul. Like Paul, it has taken 
time and thought and study and prayer and the 
fuller experiences of riper years. They began 
with only these early and scanty experiences of 
biblical fact and doctrine and promise. But the 
Bible has grown for them. They now know the 
book. They have weighed the difficulties, and 
weighed also the immense confirmations. Evi- 
dences have become more evidential. Related 
studies have enlarged their knowledge and strength- 
ened their confidence in the divine inspiration of 
the Bible. The evidence accumulates daily with 
their daily study and trust. They live by faith in 
Christ as he is so singularly disclosed in the Gos- 
pels and Epistles. The '^ Spirit beareth witness '' 

127 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

with their spirits. Other evidences they have that 
the book has on it the seal of the Holy Spirit. 
They do not disdain to receive any light which 
more modern studies bring to them. But for 
themselves this experimental method of investiga- 
tion yields the most satisfaction. They know the 
spiritual contents of the book. 

It is greatly to be regretted that so many men, 
scholarly in some single lines of biblical study, 
have unconsciously subordinated the spiritual to 
the intellectual method of investigation on this 
subject of inspiration, as well as in other and re- 
lated inquiries. It is easy to sneer at men of less 
technical leaning ; to make disparaging statements 
about the habit of ^^ seeing every part of the Bible 
as of equal value and present-day importance." 
And yet there is a certain something behind even 
the crudest ideas of inspiration, which more learned 
men, in the interests of a really scholarly breadth 
of view, would do well to consider. The specialty 
of any man*s learning is useful to us all. We 
consider his results, and compare them with other 
results not infrequently disagreeing and antago- 
nistic ; so that their main worth is not in their 
end but in their trend. The fruits of any line of 
modern scholarship we value ; but scholarship is 
no modern thing. Inductive methods may have 
been newly formulated, but they have always been 
used since men began to think. Deductive 
methods are not exclusively ancient nor exclusively 
modern. And this vast mass of experimental fact, 
accumulating through long ages, coming to us 
through the devotional study of sympathetic souls 

128 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



who have had a singular genius for interpreting 
the main ideas of the Bible, ought to have a large 
place in the appreciation of men of technical 
learning. Side by side with what they call the 
** critical results " are to be placed those which in 
another way are just as critical. 

And the man of technical learning in any de- 
partment of biblical study has need to-day to give 
an especial place to these experimental results. 
For it is obvious that much of our modern study 
is on the humanistic side rather than on the 
spiritual side of the Bible. We are to-day in- 
quiring concerning the near material facts. For 
instance, we are asking what were the near 
national events to which Isaiah refers, and those 
which awake alike the wrath and tears of Jere- 
miah ? The tendency often is to stop with the 
near and local. The reaction from more devo- 
tional methods makes us put so much emphasis 
on geographical and historic facts, that in looking 
at the human side we are in danger of forgetting 
that the Bible is God's book. So much is human 
that it is hard to see how much is divine. The 
one exclusive point of view hinders any other in 
our use of this many-sided volume. The study 
of the book as human literature is likely to make 
any specialist a one-sided man. And so some men 
versed in more modern methods of biblical study 
are getting to see their need — if they would be not 
only scholarly but learned — of being also devout. 
The verifications of the experimental method are 
of especial worth in counteracting the obvious 
danger of the technical methods of biblical study. 
I 129 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

. Much may be said, some of it wise, some of it 
foolish, about the redactors of certain portions of 
the Bible ; but we must not forget who was the 
Redactor of the whole of it. Let us use it as a 
literary text-book if we will, but we must not fail 
to use it also as a spiritual book. And the usage 
of long centuries of devout men, and the fact that 
they have found spiritual nutriment in portions of 
the volume which technical learning now decides 
to have been mainly local and national, may well 
lead us to examine our processes and to correct them 
by the inspiring thought of those biblical authors 
whose broader vision saw the distant in the near 
at hand. It is the far-off spiritual meaning which 
is the chief one for us in these later ages. In this 
way Jesus, and after him the apostles, read their 
Bible. The events of Hebrew history, though 
long gone by, were aflame to them with spiritual 
meaning. They read Jewish fact in the light of 
Christian truth. They found gospel in the Old 
Testament. And so it has ever been with that 
long series of men who, with or without the more 
technical studies of the successive ages, have seen 
God in his word. Some one has happily said that 
" there is a knowledge of the Bible as a revelation 
about a Revelation which is itself a revelation." 
And this knowledge is not the exclusive possession 
of either the learned or the unlearned. But the 
scholarly man, if he would be also a learned man, 
must use not only the critical and the philosophical, 
but also the experimental method in his study of 
the questions about the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures. 

130 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



God's guidance, in the matter of religion, not 
only by the Bible but by the additional gift of his 
Holy Spirit, is a thing of such 
gladness that some have made ^^ Section III. ^ 
fhis '^ inward blessing of the Christian Expen. 
Spirit to be the equal, and m g-uard 

some instances the superior, of 
the written word. But from such views we are re- 
strained by the Scriptures, and also by the better 
experiences of Christians themselves. Such men 
are thrown back upon the Bible. They find a re- 
action in their own spiritual life. They begin to 
shrink from the claim which makes their own judg- 
ment, their own feeling, and so their own words, 
inspired. If inspiration, in the sense in which the 
Scriptures are inspired, is continuous, then the in- 
spirations, keeping pace with the growing cen- 
turies, are more than equal to those of Paul and 
James and John. The very statement of the propo- 
sition alarms, and few dare apply to themselves 
a theory which is so obvious a mistake. So that 
the correction of an erroneous theory is found in 
the unwillingness of men to apply it to their own 
sermons and hymns and prayers.-^ That there is 
an elevation of soul, that there is a quickened dis- 
cernment, that there is a devoutness of feeling 
engendered by the Holy Spirit in the presence of 
his own truth in the sacred word, is not only ad- 
mitted but claimed. Horton, in his ^' Revelation 
and the Bible," says : "The record of Jesus in his 
person, his ways, his words, is so marvelously and 

^ For further remarks on "Continuous Revelation" see the 
close of Chapter VI., where it is discussed in another connection. 

131 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

uniquely divine that it has cast its glory over its 
recorders." But to account for the inspiration of 
the Gospels by noting the influence of Jesus on 
the natural genius of his disciples, is to tell us 
how human inspiration can arise, but not how 
divine inspiration can exist. And, similarly, Fair- 
bairn tells us ^^that the inspiration of the men who 
read is thus as integral an element in the idea of 
revelation as the inspiration of the men who wrote." 
This is to confuse the widely different ideas which 
are attached, even by these writers themselves 
elsewhere to the word '^ inspiration." We may 
not with any accuracy, either of thought or lan- 
guage, confound inspiration with illumination. 
Philologically the v/ords differ widely. Philosoph- 
ically the conceptions are utterly unlike. Re- 
ligiously they are nearly, and sometimes are quite, 
antagonistic. The inspiration of God's Holy 
Spirit is one thing. And quite another thing is 
the enlightenment of man's mind to see the glory 
of the fact or truth which God has inspired. 

When, in his Yale Lectures for 1 894, Mr. R. F. 
Horton raises the question, '^ Does the word of the 
Lord come to his servants to-day as it came to the 
prophets of Israel .^ " and when he answers it in 
the afflrmative, is he not using a phrase by which 
he confounds two very unlike things } Evidently 
he means that the blessings that come to men 
from the enlightening Spirit are just the same in 
kind as those bestowed on biblical writers. But 
all the great preachers and expounders of the word 
shrink from making the claim for themselves. To 
claim that our human hymns, sermons, and prayers 

132 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



are inspired in the same sense and in the same 
way, though in a less degree, as were Isaiah's 
prophecies or Paul's epistles, is to do one of two 
things : It is to lift our human services to an im- 
mense height, or else to bring down these prophetic 
and gospel and epistolary writings to a level, which 
in strange contrast with the tone they assume, 
would make them absurdly presumptuous. Let 
us hope, in the interest of a decent reverence, the 
latter is not the purpose. Let us hope that the 
religious experiences of Christian scholars will 
hinder them from the former assumption. 

Just here this experiential element becomes, in 
the end, a saving restraint. It guards against put- 
ting into practice a theory, the full consequences 
of which, when it is carried out, are too startling 
for reverent men. Even Mr. Horton shrinks from 
putting his own discourses in the same line as those 
of the inspired penmen ; so much better is the in- 
ward spirit than the hasty theory. The truth is 
that the great multitude of eminent preachers and 
writers of Christendom never venture to make the 
claims for themselves which such a theory re- 
quires. They have never dared assert, whatever 
their theory of inspiration, that they were under 
any such immediate direction or inspiration as 
were the biblical prophets and apostles. They 
never could venture the assertion that what they 
said was of the same authority as the living 
oracles of God. One does not need argue the case 
that were this theory true the Christian conscious- 
ness of the nineteenth century would be more 
trustworthy than the Bible itself ; that the unceas- 

133 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

ing inspirations of the larger number and the more 
largely inspired believers of to-day, would have left 
the New Testament behind us, as a book we had 
outgrown. That the New Testament is a large 
advance upon the Old we all admit ; but this 
newer Testament, made up of the experiences of 
millions of inspired men, would be a far greater 
advance on the whole Bible than anything we could 
conceive. 

But the great limitation upon excessive theory 
in this direction, is that Christian experience still 
bows itself reverently before the inspired writings. 
All our devotional and our homiletical use of the 
Bible goes on the principle that the Bible is inspired 
in a sense that belongs to no other book. The 
experimental method, if it expands the view of 
those whose great danger is from their literary 
study of the Bible, tends also to restrain the 
excesses of those who are dazzled by a theory 
that their own hearts condemn. And so no man 
can afford, in his inquiries about this great matter 
of inspiration, to overlook this inward confirmation, 
this human reflection of the Divine method of 
teaching men. Happily it is especially satisfactory 
to the great mass of Christians who have not 
enjoyed the privileges of liberal studies. But no 
trained student can be honest even to his intel- 
lectual processes, who does not acknowledge the 
validity of this great mass of religious experience. 

And, more than that. He has also himself a 
deep spiritual nature which he may not shrink 
into littleness by refusing it indulgence. The 
soul cries out after God. It must find his light or 

134 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



become bewildered in its honest efforts to escape 
the moral darkness that threatens us all. The 
vital eye is needed as well as the deft hand. 
The spiritual insight is more important than the 
clearest intellect. It is in God's light that we are 
to see light. The sad mistakes which some men 
have made whose methods have been mainly intel- 
lectual, are obvious. True breadth of view is not 
gained by ignoring any element in the problem of 
inspiration. The trend, in all our honest methods, 
is unmistakable. But the more distinctly we mark 
it in any one line, and in all related lines, the 
better. The rays of light from different points in 
the horizon lead onward to the one sun. 

In the previous section the reality and the 
worth of Christian experience have been discussed. 
We found its contents to be of « • t 

pecuhar value in this question. „„ /^. i^ ' , 
T-. ^ 1 ' J.' J. £ What IS Involved 

Devout men, by an mstmct of 7^77 1,7 .". 
^, . ^ 11 in the Christian 

their own regenerate souls, have Experience 
seized upon the central thought 
of the Bible, and so have found it to be to them 
an inspiration from God. They and their Bible 
have come into the most intimate fellowship. Its 
life and their inner Christian life are at one. Not 
only are the facts in the book related each to the 
other, but the book and the men who have had 
this Christian experience are related to each other. 
Their experience is its echo. This is its comple- 
ment and confirmation. It is the other part of the 
one fact. The two things are more than parallel. 
They approach, for some purposes, to an identity. 

135 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

This united fact cannot be ignored in studying 
such a question as that of inspiration. With 
amazing agreement, men of all Christian centuries 
testify on this subject. They may or may not 
formulate a theory of inspiration. The fact itself 
is what they know. Many of them are plain men. 
They do not care for theory. They have found a 
fact and there they stand. They have proved, in 
the deepest of experiences, that the Bible is 
inspired of God. They have a conviction on that 
matter. They now take it for granted, as they do 
the existence of God. It is, like the belief in him, 
no more to them a matter for discussion. They 
now assume it and find that the assumption works 
well ; they take it for granted, as they do the in- 
tegrity of their eyesight, though they have no 
philosophy of vision. They say " I see." That 
ends all for them. These are good, sound-minded 
men — the practical men for whom the Bible was 
written, and who are the best judges of it on this 
and some similar questions. 

The scholarly Erasmus said, *^ I utterly dissent 
from those who are unwilling that the sacred 
Scriptures should be read by the unlearned, trans- 
lated into their vulgar tongues, as though Christ 
had taught such subtleties that they can scarce be 
understood even by a few theologians." But even 
on the score of a broad scholarship no investigator 
on this and on kindred questions can afford to 
overlook this immense mass of ever-accumulating 
testimony from these most spiritual souls. They 
live and thrive upon it as an inspired book. They 
detect the sweetness as they rove over these rich 

136 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



pastures alive with blossoms out of which honey- 
is made. These men are in vital sympathy with 
the book. They are so only because they find it 
an inspiration of God. Let it be granted that 
they are not infallible as men nor as interpreters 
of special texts. Let it be conceded at once that 
a broader knowledge of lexicons and grammars and 
cognate history and scholarly exegesis would be 
helpful to them ; that they might have to dismiss 
here and there a proof-text. But on so vital a 
thing as that the substance of Scripture itself is 
both revealed and inspired by God, they are 
surely not wrong. They find that its variety 
responds to their various moods. This cannot be 
ascribed to education ; for some of them had never 
a religious training. And out of the number are 
not a few who, blessed with Christian parentage 
and instruction, had yet turned away from parental 
teachings. But with the earliest experiences in 
religion they knew where to go. They instinc- 
tively took up this book, not curiously, but de- 
voutly; not to reason about it, but to accept it. 
The new heart was the new light in which they 
studied the volume. If their experience was genu- 
ine, and some of them no more doubted it than 
their own existence, then this book was genuine. 
If the Spirit of God bore witness to them that 
they were children of God, it bore no less the wit- 
ness that this Bible was inspired by the same 
Spirit of God which had converted their souls. 
These men saw all things in a new light. The 
book and they understood each other. They 
grasped intuitively, with their new spiritual natures, 

137 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

its main ideas. They began its study as from 
within. They believed in its inspiration as they 
behoved in themselves. 

Inductive reasoning must recognize these facts. 
It must take these into account as well as man's 
intuitiv'C moral beliefs. Facts are facts. And 
these facts about a book, as seized upon by the 
purest moral convictions we ever know and as en- 
dorsed by the deepest part of our nature, are so 
much material which warrants us in certain deduc- 
tions. 

I. There is in us a sense of the moral fitness 
of an inspired book. Says Balfour, ^^We must 
take into view not merely premises and their con- 
clusions, but needs and their satisfactions." To 
the trend in the book there must be an answering 
trend in spiritual souls. To a certain degree we, 
as spiritual men, are judges of what such a revela- 
tion should contain. We can decide whether the 
book in its grand outline facts, in the aim and spirit 
of it, in its power to come home to our wants as 
men and as sinners, commends itself. About 
many a separated incident we should not be 
judges ; but when incidents fall into the great 
plan of the book, there is a sympathetic discern- 
ment which sees their moral meaning, and pre- 
pares us to receive them. We cannot infallibly 
decide by our Christian intuition what the Bible 
should contain in all its historic or doctrinal state- 
ments, in all its ethical and spiritual teachings, in 
all its prescribed duties or disclosed glories. For 
if we might decide for ourselves by our own sense 
of right, by our own inward convictions about each 

138 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



of its Statements of fact or doctrine, then we 
should need no Bible ; then it could teach us noth- 
ing we do not already know ; then our sense of 
what the Bible should be is superior to anything 
it could contain ; then the Bible would be simply 
the record of what other good men thought, felt, 
and believed about divine things ; then our sense 
of these things, as those living in a superior age, 
should override the beliefs of those who have gone 
before us. And it would also be true that God 
himself could not give us an inspired book telling 
us of what he alone knows which we should be 
bound to accept, since it might transcend our 
limited conviction of what such a book should 
contain. 

Nevertheless this sense of the fitness of an in- 
spired book is a fact. And we are competent 
judges of its worth to us as men and as sinners. 
It has a place, though not the foremost. Our 
moral sense, if it sometimes would decide incor- 
rectly through lack of sufficient data, if its de- 
cisions would sometimes differ were all the facts 
and all the reasons for them known to us, is yet 
of immense value on this question of inspiration. 
And just in proportion as this consciousness is in- 
telligently and devoutly Christian its worth in- 
creases. We certainly are able to form a fair moral 
judgment on this matter. We can decide upon 
the general trend of such a book as the Bible. 
We can get its comprehensive plan before our 
minds and hearts. We can tell whether it finds 
us at our greatest depths spiritually. We can 
judge of how it affects us to take up the book and 

139 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

submit ourselves to it as an inspired volume. We 
can judge whether or not, when the key fits ex- 
actly the intricate wards of the lock, the one was 
made for the other. And here the deduction of 
millions of devout souls is justified. Not that 
each man has tested every passage. The convert 
may, at the outset, have tested but one ; but that 
one stands involved with a thousand others. His 
reasoning is that other similar and connected and de- 
pendent portions are equally an inspiration of God. 
Older Christians have proved other portions still; 
and so it comes about that a broadened experience 
verifies all the main promises of the Bible. But 
these promises stand connected with facts. They 
had not existed apart from the recorded events. 
The two are one. A fact and a doctrine are the 
same thing differently stated ; and they both in- 
volve a principle, out of which comes a promise or 
a threatening ; for a threatening is simply an in- 
verted promise. And thus fact, doctrine, precept, 
and promise are capable of verification by Chris- 
tian experience. '^ If any man wills to do his will, 
he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of 
God." Trend in the word finds trend in the obedi- 
ent soul. Both the soul and the book are '^born 
of the Spirit." They are mutual in their witness. 
Guidance responds to guidance. Because some 
have gone too far and placed the Spirit in their 
own souls above the word, or have made it the 
equal of the word, let us not think the less of the 
true testimony. Because some have erred in the 
other direction, and have put the Spirit, together 
with the word, in subjection to human reason, thus 

140 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



undervaluing the '^ Spirit which He hath given us/* 
let us not reject the testimony of God as furnished 
either in the word or in the Christian soul. The 
''witness of the Spirit" makes men sure that they 
are sons of God. And by the same token they 
are sure of the work of the Spirit in the word. 
The inspiring Spirit, in giving the written word, 
may be doing a largely superior kind of work, 
but he is the same Spirit. He gave the gift of a 
special inspiration to some men in the olden time. 
Another and inferior gift may be ours, as we seek 
in humility to interpret the meaning, under his 
guidance, of the sacred oracles. But the word 
of God and the regenerating and sanctifying Spirit 
in the soul bear their witness each to the other. 

2. The universal expectation of inspiration finds 
its satisfaction in this book. We do not of our- 
selves know any too much about religion. Men 
have prayed to be delivered from their religions 
in moments of disgust with them all ; and they 
have longed for God to speak out to souls really 
hungry for the truth. There is a thing lacking 
until God speaks. There is an appetite that 
finds no supply until God gives bread from heaven. 
There is an eye made for seeing, but it has no 
satisfaction for its vision until it rests on some 
authentic revelation from God. We need a volume 
of '' truth without any admixture of error," a 
final standard of appeal, a judge to end the strife. 
And millions have found a satisfaction alike for 
brain and heart in the word of God. Therein one 
of the most unmistakable wants of the race is met. 
There is a call for some final authority in religion. 

141 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

It must find satisfaction in a divinely inspired 
book, in this and in all coming centuries. As the 
final revelation of God is in him who is called the 
'' Word" — the living Word — so the record of what 
he was and did and said is fittingly the written 
word of divine inspiration. It would be of all 
things most strange if God, who has used other 
means of teaching men, should fail of using a mode 
of revelation which was along the line of the ex- 
pectation of mankind. 

And so, in an age prolific in literature, the New 
Testament made its appearance. It had been pre- 
ceded by oral preaching. The oral period recog- 
nized, as we see from the Acts and Epistles, the 
prior authority of the Old Testament Scriptures 
then written. It expected a written New Testa- 
ment. Authentic writing was the method God had 
used in the case of the prophets. In the Orient, 
accurate memorizing of the very words of a written 
document is still a method of teaching. It is said 
that public teachers of the Koran sometimes cannot 
read a word of that book. But they can recite, 
and even teach, from a memorizing so exact that 
it equals the best proof-reading of to-day. In the 
oral telling of the Christ-story, had there been 
any variations the hearers would have detected 
them as quickly as we detect variations on the 
printed page. But this oral testimony needed to 
be put on record for succeeding generations. 
Matthew's Gospel has been assigned to dates vary- 
ing from one to fifteen years — the time of its gen- 
eral acceptance of course was years afterward. 
John's final book, the Revelation, is assigned by 

142 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



some critics to a. d. 6o, by some to a. d. 90. So 
that within the Hfetime of the apostles, the New 
Testament was completed. By no means was the 
selection of the books for the sacred canon arbi- 
trary. Fathers, churches, and councils simply 
said what books were commonly received. The 
subsequent councils have repeated these declara- 
tions, just as churches in Christendom are doing 
to-day. A book like the New Testament was to 
be expected after the oral gospels, putting into 
form the things generally reported and believed, 
part here and part there, among the disciples of 
the Lord. These eye-witnesses could not always 
live. So that the thing to be expected was that 
before their death the scattered incidents and 
teachings to which they bore testimony, would be 
given to the world in permanent shape. God met 
the desire he had implanted by such a book as our 
New Testament. Early it appealed to the knowl- 
edge and the conviction of the Christians then 
living ; and each generation of believers has met 
and responded to the same appeal. 

3. There is also a demand in us for an inspired 
book, when we remember the subjects on which the 
Bible speaks to us. If ever we are entitled to de- 
mand accuracy it is in documents dealing with such 
matters as these. So much depends on the exact 
statement, that some have been ready to own the 
fact of inspiration in the case of the more important 
truths. They admit the need of a divine inspira- 
tion in the remarkable prophecies which no unaided 
man could have uttered. No '^ natural genius for 
religion " can account for some of the wonderful 

143 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

unfoldings at once so broad in their scope and so 
minute in their detail. Parts of the Scriptures, 
here and there, it is allowed, demand a superhuman 
influence or they cannot be trustworthy on these 
special subjects. And yet the other parts are so 
closely connected with these of such admitted im- 
portance that it would be very hard to discriminate. 
Is it not better to say that while all of the material 
needs divine guidance, some portions of it would 
seem to require a larger measure of the Spirit's pres- 
ence than others ? The conspicuousness of divine 
guidance is clear in some parts of the book ; but 
men would widely differ as to what part needed 
the more careful oversight. Prophecy would com- 
pete with History in some minds, while Gospel 
would challenge Epistle in others, as most requir- 
ing the guiding hand of God in the record. Each 
man has his varying mood ; so that he comes to 
feel that now this part and now that part of 
the Scriptures needs to be inspired. There is 
clearly the trend of demand. Just as clearly is 
there the parallel trend in the divine word. 

4. We are warranted, also, in giving prominence 
to that exceeding aff ectionateness wherewith so 
many spiritual Christians regard the Scriptures. 
The Bible is precious beyond anything that words 
can express. It has entered into their deepest life. 
There is an indescribable tone and spirit in the 
book, as if one had grown into the inner meaning 
of many a text. There is, besides that which 
meets the eye, a kind of holy aroma as of some 
fragrant flower. In and through some glorified 
text there seems to be almost a contact with the 

144 



THE EXPERIENTIAL ARGUMENT 



God who gave it. This experience beggars words. 
One must feel it to know it. All day long the 
text rings out its silver music. There is an atmos- 
phere as from out the other world. There is a 
mount of transfiguration. The new text is old, for 
on it are strung other texts from far-away ex- 
periences of glorified saints. And equally the old 
text is new ; on it is the dew of a summer morn- 
ing. There comes to be a use of the sacred text 
that the merely verbal critics do not discern. A 
verse rises out of its obscurity into prominence. 
And just as the New Testament writers sometimes 
quote a great general principle as involved in a 
single local and historical passage, so the spiritual 
soul finds by quick insight a devoutness, a spirit- 
uality where others saw only the coarse husk of in- 
cidental statement. And this is because the heart 
is in sympathy with God in these sacred pages. 
The soundest dictates of reason, the clearest results 
of exegetical study, often agree with these deduc- 
tions of men receptive of the Holy Spirit. Such 
do indeed snatch a glance more vital. They do 
indeed touch a height never else gained. They 
get sometimes the choice fragrance and sweetness 
of the honey from the flower. 

Now, would it not be strange if a converted head 
and a converted heart were far apart ? Would it 
not be more singular if, when the best reason and 
deepest moral nature were both exercised on the 
written word, there should be a failure of the man 
and the book to correspond each with the other ? 
Let us accept the fact that God gives the word so 
that man may believe in it with the faith of a regen- 

K 145 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

erate heart. The seed is for the soil, the soil is for 
the seed. The great Husbandman has not mis- 
judged in the one or the other, nor yet in the union 
of both unto the given end of spiritual harvest- 
ing. " My words are spirit and life." 



146 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 

We have seen in the previous discussion, that 
the sacred Scriptures stand in close relation to the 
"fundamental truths" which are revealed in our 
deepest nature. These "primitive intuitions" 
about God, the right and the wrong, the probation 
of man, the immortality of the soul and the final 
account, all need, as has been shown, some outside 
potency of restoration so as to secure their own 
right working. They need to be made clearer and 
sharper, so that there is obviously required a supe- 
rior touch from the one perfect Mind, the one per- 
fect Soul in the universe. These intuitions we 
saw to be never final, but always prophetic. There 
is an expectation about them. They demand a 
person to liberate them from the sin in us which 
tends always to hinder and thwart them. They 
need in our imperfect state the touch of a power 
that can give them their old natural liberty; that 
can restore them to their original force. Trust- 
worthy as far as they go, they are at best but 
rudimentary. They have no hint of helpfulness 
where we have done wrong ; no inherent power to 
restore the lost polarity of the soul. Rectifica- 
tion these intuitions sorely need and potency they 
must have. They are beginnings but not endings. 
Their worth is what they can become when larger 

147 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

light and greater freedom and stronger impulse 
are given them. 

We have seen that the Bible is in such strong 
accord with these ^^ original beliefs " that, in every 
case, it takes them up and carries them on. There 
is kindred between the two ; they are the inner and 
the outer revelation. Each appeals to the other. 
They work harmoniously. The intuition needs the 
new throb imparted by some superior soul that can 
corroborate and clarify them. We need some one 
who can rid us of the confusion to which a sinful 
soul in a sinful environment is liable in the very act 
of using these " primal truths." The mariner needs 
not only to have a correct compass, but to know how 
to use it. The '' intuitions " want help so as to 
make themselves conspicuous enough in this busy 
world to demand attention from our own selves. 
The conscience has had its polarity disturbed and 
requires rearranging. The watch, an instrument 
for detecting time, needs to be set by standard time. 
So the conscience is an instrument for detecting 
the right, but it needs adjusting and regulating. 
There is room and there is demand for revealed 
religion to supplement our moral instincts ; room 
and need for a new outside intervention in the 
interests of righteousness. And if there is a 
series of these interventions, then there is need 
for the record of them — such a record as is 
claimed for the Bible. 

And further ; we have seen in the discussion on 
'^our written Bible," that the record of the inspired 
events, and of the series of them, and of their 
setting amid the ordinary events, shows one great 

148 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



divine thought expressed in various forms of Hter- 
ature. In and through it all there beats the heart- 
throb of a divine life. The men who write do so 
freely, each after his own fashion, each with the 
water-marks of his own age, each exhibiting his 
own personality. In these things, so far from the 
divine thought being hampered or hindered, there 
is the more conspicuous inspiration of varied 
human potencies. Plainly it is better that all 
these peculiarities of age and authorship should 
be used by the Holy Spirit. He claims all gifts 
as his own to employ at will. He is one Spirit, 
using each man as he finds him ; so that each 
one's weaknesses and potencies are made contribu- 
tory, though in different ways, in the perfect 
divine inspiration. The book has thus a unique 
plan among the religious books of the world. 
History and psalm, proverb and prophecy, Gospel 
and epistle, inspired by one thought, become the 
*^ living oracles," the ^^ living word of the living 
God " which abideth forever. By some one of 
these forms of literature and sometimes by them 
all, it holds men in its vital grasp. Right through 
the book runs one appeal. It addresses now the 
reason and now the conscience ; here the emotions 
and there the will. It addresses in one part the 
imagination, in another the taste ; at one time it 
gives us artless narratives, at another it gives us 
devout prophecies. It abounds in biography. It 
gathers up from its best men their excellencies. 
Each good man contributes at least one virtue. 
And all these separate '^studies" are assembled at 
length in the one great portraiture of Christ as he 

149 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

stands forth as the Son of man, the embodiment 
of all ideal manhood. 

But it is as clear that he is also the only begot- 
ten Son of the Father. The whole contributing 
thought of the Bible leads up to him. And just 
as clearly as the book shows a unique personage, 
so it shows a unique mission which he comes to 
accomplish among men. The redemptive thought 
pervades all. He is here to restore man. He 
sets up a new kingdom of regenerate souls. The 
whole movement of things has been toward this 
result. As a Saviour he is the theme of all the 
prophets. He is the fulfillment of all restorative 
predictions. He is the end of the old law as a 
dispensation. He is the meaning of all the old 
divinely ordained redemptive ritual. His death 
and resurrection and the resulting gifts of the 
Holy Spirit are the culminating facts of the Bible. 
Everywhere through this volume run these great 
trends of holy thought, as lines of magnetic trend 
find their culmination in the poles of the earth. 
The trend of the record is like that of the facts. 
God is in the book peculiarly. It is a book alike 
of human and divine inspiration. 

Let us ask, looking over the volume, and gath- 
ering therefrom its general character and its fre- 
quent references to the Holy 
Section L Spirit, what we are warranted 

What we are War- ^ ^ r i • 

X rr iT 1 to expect from him as an m- 
ranted to Expect • • o -^ 
^ spirmg bpint. 

The presence to some degree of the Holy 
Spirit must be conceded. He will be likely to use 

ISO 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



human literature as his agency and good men as 
his agents in providing for the world appropriate 
literature. If it is possible to leave to men their 
freedom and yet so to oversee, direct, preserve 
them from error and guide them into all truth 
about the things they write, then the deduction is 
warranted that select men not only can be so 
influenced, but will be so influenced. And fur- 
ther, it may be said that by this time in the 
world's history this Spirit has somewhere done this 
work. Nor is there any claimant for this to be 
considered seriously save this one of the Bible. 
If we take up the instances in which in former days 
this Holy Spirit has used men in revelations, we 
must admit the immense probability that he can 
give an inspired record of those former revelations. 
It is obvious, from the whole drift of the Scrip- 
tures, that the inspiring Spirit has always used the 
recognized methods of successive ages. Moses* 
burning bush in the wilderness might mean little 
now, though it was the recognized method of reve- 
lation in former days, as was also Elijah's altar-fire 
on Carmel. The visions young men were to see 
and the dreams old men were to dream in the Mes- 
siah's day under the Holy Spirit's influence are no 
more expected or needed as a method of revela- 
tion. But to-day human literature is the expected 
method when man would enlighten his fellow-man, 
and when God would guide those who live in these 
centuries. The authentic document, the attested 
declaration, the carefully proven fact reduced to 
accurate statement, is the expected method to-day. 
The Holy Spirit as the divine recorder has had 

151 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

in mind the growing centuries which culminated 
in our own. He foresaw. He began long ago. He 
had the testimony gathered, confirmed, recorded. 
All this, which we are warranted to expect such 
an inspiring Spirit to do through men and for 
men, is exactly done here in the Bible. The 
Sinai tables of stone, the wisest thing as all admit 
for that day and those circumstances, have been 
superseded by the written volume. He who is a 
Spirit and who knows the human spirit in all the 
hidden ways in which it can be influenced, surely 
would not neglect to use the instrumentality of 
man created in his own image when he would give 
us the ripest possible revelation of his will. And 
it is also reasonable to believe that when he 
directed Moses to write out certain things at one 
time on a table of stone, and at another to write 
out other things in a book, he would not desert 
him in obeying either command. When Jeremiah 
is told to speak certain words and then to write 
out his oral utterances in a book, would the guid- 
ance given him in the one case be denied him in 
the other .^ Thought and word are so closely 
related that the one must use the other, and the 
inspiring Spirit may be expected to use them both. 
From what we know of the Spirit in the record 
— treating now the record only as ordinary his- 
tory — we are entitled to assume that God will use 
the thought and word of free men as far as is 
needed in giving to us a volume like the Bible. 
The immense, the overwhelming probabilities are 
in favor of the adoption of such a course in giv- 
ing us a book of religious fact and doctrine and 

152 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



duty. The trend of the book itself and the cor- 
responding trend of expectation is toward an inspi- 
ration which separates the book from all other lit- 
erature. 

We may also reason from what we know of the 
men who are thus inspired by the Holy Spirit. 

They are men of integrity. 
^f,^^^^ ?^* jp ^^^y give us their statement 
the Men concerning what they knew ; 

they testify directly in some 
instances to their own consciousness. How far 
should we expect them to go in claiming inspi- 
ration ? How often are they to prefix or annex a 
statement that God speaks through them ? Sup- 
pose that in some cases there is at the time no 
direct consciousness of guidance, and that only 
afterward do they or their inspired brethren 
declare this thing. Even were that the case in 
some instances, the inspiration itself would not be 
vitiated. So too, there were evident reasons why 
the proper name of Jehovah should not occur at 
all in a given book. And yet the book is full of 
Jehovah as the providential Lord. The reasons for 
suppression at the time of an authorship which 
every Hebrew then living would instantly recog- 
nize, may be abundant. A writing is none the 
less accurate if the author does not see fit for 
sufficient personal or political reasons to affix his 
name at the outset. Authorship not avowed in 
some cases for any good reason, does not hinder 
accuracy, as it does not harm inspiration. 

And this is the more evident where, as in the 

153 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

case of a book constructed like our Bible, a series of 
succeeding inspirations endorses those which pre- 
cede them. But where authorship is distinctly 
declared, how often is it to be reiterated ? Surely 
it should not be expected before every sentence 
or every paragraph. It would be an absurd re- 
quirement which should demand that the writers 
affix their own names and that of their God to 
every statement. Perhaps as often as in the cir- 
cumstances a fair criticism would require it, the 
testimony alike to human and divine authorship 
is given us. Indeed, the frequency of the iteration 
in some parts of the Scriptures has been the occa- 
sion of unfavorable remark. The statement about 
the ** word of the Lord " as coming to an individual 
writer, and the formula, ^^Thus saith the Lord" 
in some parts of the Bible, are far too frequent to 
please the modern taste ; exactly as is the reitera- 
tion of the human authorship in some of the New 
Testament Epistles. Would it be legitimate 
criticism to assert that the authorship of Paul is 
confined to the opening words of his epistles in 
which he asserts himself the author ? Would it 
be an honest treatment to insist that only the 
next sentence after his opening assertion about 
authorship is entitled to be considered as the only 
authentic statement in the document ? And we 
may no more demand this of a statement in the 
Old Testament histories and prophecies than in 
the New Testament Gospels and Epistles. Unless 
there is some plain limitation, the claim of an 
author is over the whole writing. John's state- 
rnent, ** he that saw bear record ; he knoweth that 

154 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



he saith true, that ye might believe/' must be 
considered as covering all his claim. So too, it 
is with his statement ^* this is the disciple that 
testifieth these things." A truthful man may assert 
but he will not always be parading his own truth- 
fulness. There are statements elsewhere about 
God's being with a man and letting none of his 
statements fall to the ground. The commission 
of a prophet or an apostle was attested by his work, 
as e. g.y that of Moses and Samuel and Paul and 
John, by the signs and wonders wrought in God and 
addressed to their own generation, as their written 
words were addressed to all generations. In many 
cases declaration of authorship was needless in the 
age of the author. No one else in those circum- 
stances could have written the book. In other 
cases, however, the declaration of authorship was 
explicit. But always character and the accom- 
panying attestation were worth even more than 
assertion. And so it came about, as we might 
expect, that sometimes we have declarative words, 
and sometimes declarative deeds, and sometimes 
both. That Moses received direct divine communi- 
cations is expressly asserted. He declares on 
one occasion his divine mission in the words, *^ I 
Am hath sent me unto you." Formulas like 
these are unmistakable, '^ The Lord said," *^ God 
said," '' The word of the Lord." Isaiah uses direct 
words in asserting his claim. '^ The word of the 
Lord " came to Jeremiah the prophet, and to 
^^Ezekiel, the priest'' ; also '^the vision" to Daniel. 
The whole series of men known in the biblical 
canon as " the prophets " claim to be divinely 

155 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

employed. Their phrases are such as these, '^ The 
Lord gave the commandment," ** Write the vision." 

These men themselves understood and they made 
others understand that they were inspired of God. 
How they could have testified more explicitly to 
their own consciousness of this thing it is not 
easy to imagine. And some of these men took 
great pains to have their writings preserved. The 
writing in one case was on tables of stone, laid up 
in a sacred chest called the ^^ark"; and beside 
these were placed, by order of Moses, the *'book 
of the law." Ten out of sixteen of the prophets 
call their communications from God ^^the law," 
or ^^the law of the Lord." The terms ''statutes 
and ordinances," in an age now shown to be an 
age of written records, can have but one meaning. 
In the New Testament, Luke's claim at the outset 
of his Gospel, and in the ^nemorabilia of his Acts, 
are evidence on this point. The promises, ^' It is 
not ye that speak but the Holy Ghost," and ''The 
Holy Ghost shall teach you all things," are some- 
where fulfilled. Nor is there a claimant to be 
seriously considered outside of the New Testament 
writers. The authoritative words of the council 
at Jerusalem are a claim direct and positive, " It 
seemeth good to the Holy Ghost and to us." Over 
and over again the divinely inspired consciousness 
of Paul utters itself : " Which words we speak not 
in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but 
which the Holy Ghost teacheth." 

What is asserted of written or of spoken 
"words" is sometimes expressed of "thoughts," 
and the two are frequently interchangeable, ex- 

156 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



actly as they are in all other literature. Some- 
times the word is '^say," sometimes "teach/* 
sometimes *^ write." Occasionally, as in other lit- 
erature, the word chosen of the three is selected 
for some special reason, but in other cases euphony 
only seems to determine the choice. The "chief 
apostle" says or writes — he uses either word — 
"the things I write unto you are the command- 
ments of the Lord," and the words of Paul are 
echoed by Peter as he says, "the commandment 
of us the apostles of the Lord"; and John re- 
echoes the words both of Paul and Peter, as we 
read "this is his commandment." 

Let it be noted further that inspired men in 
their consciousness endorse the inspiration of pre- 
viously inspired men. ^ Of course they cannot 
themselves have the original human knowledge of 
their predecessors as to a given fact. Paul can- 
not have personal consciousness of what Moses 
thought. But Paul may be able to bear witness, 
from his own sense of the inspiring Spirit, to the 
inspiration of the record Moses has made. Cer- 
tain books were known as the " Scriptures " in 
Paul's day. To these books the inspiring Spirit 

^ Some of the instances in which the New Testament claims 
the inspiration of the Old Testament are : Matt. 4 : 4-1 1 ; 5 117, 
18 ; 15 : I-14 ; Mark 7:1-9; Matt. 22 : 29-32 ; Luke 16 : 29- 
31 ; John 5 : 39-47 ; Matt. 12 : 1-5 ; Luke 6 : 3, 4 ; Matt. 12 : 
41, 42 ; Luke 4 : 23-27 ; Matt. 21 : 15, 16; 22 : 41-46; Mark 
12 : 35-37 ; Luke 24 : 44-46 ; John 10 : 32-39 ; Matt. 13 : 13- 
15 ; 15 • 7-9 ; 21 : 13 ; Mark 7 : 6, 7 ; Luke 4 : 17-21 ; Matt. 24 : 
15 ; Mark 13 : 14 ; Matt. 9 : 13 ; 12:7, 39-41 ; 16:4; Luke 
17 : 29-32 ; Matt. lO : 35, 36 ; II : lo, etc. ; Luke 7 : 27 ; Matt. 
II : 10-12 ; Mark 9 : II-13 ; Matt. 21 : 42, 43 ; 26 : 54-56 ; Luke 
24 : 27, 44-46. 

157 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

in Paul gave testimony. He said, '' Every scrip- 
ture inspired of God is also profitable/' "Holy 
men spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost." There is a fair interpretation of these 
declarations. Their meaning is unmistakable. 
They leave an absolute conviction of divine en- 
dorsement when he who speaks employs *' the 
words the Holy Ghost teacheth." "God spake by 
the fathers," is the endorsement of the author of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews when he is comparing 
the Old Scripture with the new teaching of the 
divine Son. "The divers portions" and "the 
divers manners" of the record "in the prophets" 
as declared in "the old time" are noted in dis- 
tinction from those "spoken unto us by his Son," 
who is "upholding all things by the word of his 
power " ; the potent "word " of the one is compared 
with the more potent "word" of the other. Paul, 
naming facts of the olden time known only from 
the Mosaic books, insists that these things were 
"given for instruction." Quoting events which are 
recorded exclusively in the same Mosaic books, 
Paul says that "these things were written for our 
admonition." Citing the very words of a single 
prophet, he covers not only all the "prophets," 
but all "the Law" as well in the five great record 
books of the Mosaic time by his broad declaration, 
"For whatsoever things were written aforetime 
were written for our learning, that we through 
patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have 
hope." 

Is it possible to cover the ground of the Old 
Testament inspiration more thoroughly than by 

158 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



such a declaration ? Remember how, as an edu- 
cated Hebrew, he must have used the words 
^^the Scriptures." Remember that he hereby en- 
dorses not only the general facts of Hebrew his- 
tory, but this history as '* written," using twice 
that word "written" in the same sentence. Re- 
member too, that he includes not only select 
portions commending themselves to his own sense 
of fitness and personal taste, but covers the whole 
series of events ^'written" by the most compre- 
hensive word he can use — the word "whatsoever." 
Here is fact endorsed and the record of it endorsed 
through his own utterance, in which he claimed 
that he teaches what the Holy Ghost teaches him. 
He not only quotes from David, Isaiah, and Jere- 
miah, but he founds arguments again and again 
on statements of facts for which he is indebted 
exclusively to the Mosaic Scriptures. "The 
Prophets," a well-known division of the " Scrip- 
tures," are cited as authoritative on matters of fact 
and faith. In the opening chapters of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, we have the statement that God 
"spake to the fathers." And Peter tells us that 
"holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost." The seventy-sixth and one hundred and 
fifth Psalms are founded on incidents in the his- 
torical books. These cross references from men 
who say "the Lord said" to other men who claim 
of their writings that " thus saith the Lord " are 
very strong declarations as to the inspiration both 
of the writers who quote and of those who are 
quoted ; and so are double proofs of the inspira- 
tion of our sacred books. 

159 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

The endorsement of our Lord is also very ex- 
plicit. It seems to many strange that his words, 
"Moses gave you the law," should not settle the 
question at once of the authenticity of the Mosaic 
books and of their inspiration. The question of 
Moses' compilation from all existing materials and 
of the revision by subsequent writers does not 
come into account. All historians compile, even 
when they rewrite. The substantially Mosaic 
origin of the books is not affected by subsequent 
annotations by other inspired men. "Milman's 
Gibbon's Rome" is not the less Gibbon's own 
work because of additions and emendations made 
by Milman after Gibbon was dead. The Penta- 
teuch is Mosaic in material and in form as well 
as in spirit. And our Lord's endorsement of the 
"Law" which, in Christ's age, was certainly the 
Pentateuch substantially as we now have it, should 
not be looked upon as in any way restricted to 
the sentences he may quote. He knew what the 
words "the law and the prophets" meant to his 
contemporaries. If his words of reference are to 
be restricted to some particular saying of Moses, 
he was bound as a truthful teacher to make that 
restriction plain when speaking on such a subject. 
John says, quoting the popular Jewish belief, "the 
law was given by Moses." It was a statement 
having a threefold endorsement : that of Moses, 
that of John speaking under the Holy Spirit's 
direction, and that of the uncontradicted belief of 
the inspired disciples of the Lord. The people 
also say, "We know that God spake to Moses." 
Our Lord quotes from the Mosaic books which are 

i6o 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



ascribed by him and by all the people to Moses. 
He gives from the Mosaic story the incident of 
the uplifting of the serpent — an endorsement, in the 
circumstances, also of facts occurring before the 
recorded incident — facts which alone made the in- 
cident possible. Such quotations, sometimes direct, 
and such citations sometimes of a fact which is more 
potent than mere words could be, are very strong 
endorsements. * For a fact may involve a series of 
related facts. It may illuminate an age. It may 
testify to a whole mass of surrounding circum- 
stances. It may be central to a whole system of 
things. It may incarnate a thought. 

And yet, for those more impressed by direct 
citation, we have our Lord's quotation from four 
of the five books of Moses specifically, as well as 
from David, Isaiah, Zechariah, and Malachi. He 
uses the formula, '^ It is written.'' He uses it in 
authoritative quotation as to matters of fact and 
faith. Paul quotes from the other book of Moses 
which our Lord had no occasion to cite. 

It has been held that our Lord's citations from 
the books of Moses show the inspiration of only 
the words cited. But those who so hold fail to 
tell us why the particular words quoted are to be 
regarded as inspired and those in the portions 
before and after are to be regarded as not inspired. 
The words cited are not in themselves more im- 
portant than those not named, since they are cited 
only to prove a point under discussion. There is 
no reason to doubt Christ's endorsement of the in- 
spiration of the words before and after if there had 
been equal cause to quote them. His formula, 
L i6i 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

**It is written," in the circumstances, is an en- 
dorsement of books in which the words *' God 
spake," and ''God said," and ''thus saith the 
Lord," are found as often as, under the conditions 
of the authorship, could be expected. Deed and 
word and document, quotation and repetition of 
quotation, would seem to leave no room for any 
new form of endorsement. 

True some very reverent and careful students 
do not see this. A quarter of a century ago 
statements were made about the impossibility of a 
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch on two 
grounds, viz., the alleged lack of literary material 
in Palestine; and, also, the alleged non-existence 
of even the art of writing. These statements re- 
peated even by Renan, set a considerable number 
of scholarly men at work to discover some subse- 
quent period when the literary conditions were 
possible, and the Pentateuch could be made up 
from existing traditions. The existence of a He- 
brew literature from the time of Joshua onward 
made it impossible to find any point where this 
could have been done until about the period of the 
Exile. There was not one shred of direct proof 
that it was actually done at that time. But as it 
was done at some time, that period was considered 
the most probable. Nor was it difficult when once 
the theory had been assumed, to find incidents 
that seemed to fit into the theory. But now it 
appears increasingly evident that the two main 
reasons for distrusting the Mosaic period and for 
thinking the period after the Exile was the bet- 
ter one, are both liable to formidable objection. 

162 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



A Jewish author writing at the close of the Exile 
would never, unless all patriotic feeling were gone, 
have placed the Garden of Eden amid the accursed 
waters of the Babylonian captivity. He would 
not study the polytheistic documents of his hated 
oppressors to draw from them a story of creation 
and palm it off as a Hebrew document, which in 
that case must have been a transcript of a heathen 
version of the creative storv. It is now seen how 
lacking in probability is a theory which makes a 
devout and patriotic Israelitish priest account for 
the origin of his holy Sabbath by referring it to a 
heathen tradition slightly changed and newly ac- 
commodated to Hebrew requirements. 

But if the difficulties increase upon us with fresh 
study, and we feel reasonably sure that the exilic 
period was entirely inadequate in its surroundings 
to give us these moral molds of Hebrew literature, 
what then ? We must go back again to the Mo- 
saic age to find a place which permits the origin 
of such a book as the Pentateuch. Within the 
last few years the spade — some one has called it 
the '^ spade of God " — has shown us an extensive 
literary civilization in ancient Palestine ; shown us 
also that both Hebrew and Babylonian writing ex- 
isted in abundance; shown us that in Egypt and 
in the wilderness the Hebrew story of creation 
and of the ante-Mosaic incidents of history could 
have been compiled and written ; shown us too, the 
peculiar Oriental flavor of these documents as pe- 
culiar to that period and that alone. But more 
important still is the fact of an Oriental style of 
historical record similarly exhibited in the cunei- 

163 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

form literature and in the Pentateuch. In his 
book '^ Genesis and Semitic Traditions," Dr. Davis 
has shown that the ^^ scrappy style" of Genesis, 
about which so much has been said, is precisely 
that of papyrus and cylinder which all admit to 
be veritable history. The ^^ beginnings again," 
the '^view as from a different writer's standpoint," 
which have caused some Hebrew scholars to des- 
ignate the supposed authors by letters of the 
alphabet, are shown to be the ancient Oriental 
method of historic record. Dr. Davis has shown 
that while the biblical method is exactly the same 
as the Babylonian and Assyrian and Egyptian, 
yet the narrative itself is that of a '^ Hebrew tra- 
dition independent of and earlier than all others." 
So that what was deemed an objection twenty-five 
years ago, is now regarded as a confirmation of the 
Mosaic authorship of these documents. And the 
peculiar moral as well as the unique literary 
flavor of the documents, adds to the immense 
probability of the earlier date. They show that 
monotheism preceded polytheism ; and anthropo- 
morphic conceptions preceded the grotesque and 
impossible stories of heathen gods and goddesses. 
The Hebrew idea is older, purer, loftier. It shows 
the conception of man as made in the image of 
God, and so God as revealed in man. 

It may indeed be possible to hold to the later 
origin of our earlier Old Testament books, and 
still retain a measure of faith in their divine in- 
spiration. Some devout men actually do so. They 
rightly protest against any suspicion of their lack 
of faith in the divine inspiration of the Pentateuch. 

164 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



They believe the Bible to be the word of God. 
They see a divine movement in the facts as de- 
veloped and recorded. They insist that they have 
a right to discuss the literary methods of the Bible, 
as they have of any other piece of literature. 
They hold that the Pentateuch, so far as its mere 
statement of facts is concerned, could have been 
inspired as well after the Exile as before. 

But on the other hand, the needless waiting 
until the Exile to give us the story seems to many 
an imputation on the wisdom of God. Why pass 
by the age when other nations who were not God's 
people had a story of creation ? Why let a period 
of special literary activity go by for an age of ob- 
scurity, before inspiring the records as God had 
inspired the facts ? Why let a people, keen in the 
moral interpretation of historic events, be left 
without the knowledge of the origin and meaning 
of their Sabbath, and so be obliged to learn of a 
seventh day as the universal observance of primi- 
tive peoples from heathen records in Egypt or 
Babylonia ? There might be a degree of inspira- 
tion in such a record. There might be a trend 
faintly discernible. But the stronger trend is 
surely along the line of the inspiration of such a 
man as Moses, in an age when writing had become 
advanced enough to be historic, and when there 
existed that peculiar literary art which could only 
feebly and unsuccessfully be imitated in the days 
of the Hebrew Exile. The few objections escaped 
by fixing upon the later date plunge us into larger 
difficulties and immensely weaken our apprehension 
of a divine trend in the record. 

i6s 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Very noticeable also is the general course of 

development which shows itself on the very face 

of the biblical story. Take 
Section III. ^1^^ i^^^ ^f QqJ^ • j^ g^^^^g ^ 

The General Course i ^i_ i • 

of Development t^ ^/PP^ anthropomorphism. 

^ That conception for that age 

is itself an inspiration. Persons who have not 
acquired the art of getting out of the present cen- 
tury in their conception of very ancient historic 
facts, sometimes reproach the Bible for this thing; 
whereas it is happily its distinguishing trait. It 
begins on a higher plane than any other literature. 
Its delightful simplicity, as it represents God walk- 
ing as a man might do in the cool of the day to 
enjoy the quiet after the labor is over, God as 
holding conversation with man about what he shall 
eat or not eat, God as pleased or angry, God as 
smelling a sweet savor, God as glad or as repent- 
ing, using a mode of speech, so unlike morally to 
the way in which other literatures present their 
ancient gods, is most refreshing and instructive. 
The Bible begins with this likeness of God to man ; 
and never, even in its most complete presentations 
of the idea of God, does it cease to use anthropo- 
morphic conceptions. They are indeed, as befits 
the childhood of the race, more simple in Genesis. 
It is that fact which gives them their charm. 
Genesis in its tone as well as in its form, is a de- 
lightful antiquity. Here the childhood of the race 
matches the childhood of each member of it. We 
all begin with conceiving of God as a larger and 
stronger man. The conception in after years is 
more complete, guided as it is by the Bible. But 

i66 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



we all begin where the Bible begins. So far is 
the conception from anything low or coarse that 
it is the very opposite of these. The simplicity 
of the time befits the simplicity of the idea; and 
both are fitly set forth in words of the most charm- 
ing simplicity. Never is the dignity lost ; it is the 
better presented by this chasteness and homeli- 
ness. This ancient severity is the exact opposite 
of the florid literature of the later Jewish ages. 

And this primitive idea expands easily and natu- 
rally. God becomes greater. He is more than the 
mighty man projected. He is, as the Bible pro- 
ceeds, the living One, gathering into himself the 
intensity of all life. He is the ''I Am" God. He 
becomes the object of worship. He is the sole 
Sovereign who, as Lord, issues law. He takes on 
moral qualities, and is holy. He becomes the God 
of promise and providence. He makes choice of 
men to whom, in whom, and by whom, he reveals 
himself. With this greater fullness of God there 
is greater adorableness. 

And presently, with this increased revelation, he 
is also nearer to men. Idea is added to idea. He 
is going to come yet closer to the race. There are 
yet more complete theophanies. These manifesta- 
tions of God grow in character as they grow in 
number. He is revealing himself in every pos- 
sible way that the ages, in their increasing appre- 
hension, will permit. He is presently to become 
incarnate in man, ^* the man Christ Jesus." The 
movement goes steadily on from the beginning. 
There is inspired order. The divine idea in self- 
revelation is conspicuous. It is all an inspiration. 

167 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

And the progress in all doctrines which are re- 
lated to this doctrine of God, is also manifest. 
The doctrine of man as a moral being is pervaded 
by the same inspiration. He is described in the 
historical book of Genesis in his physical aspect, 
when the writer is enumerating the objects com- 
prehended in the creative work. But the moral 
endowment is also named, as he becomes a living 
soul in the image of God — an intellectual and a 
spiritual being, as is God. That such a being, 
formed for companionship wdth God, should have 
started on the lowest moral plane, is repugnant to 
all who see the glory and beauty of Eden as re- 
flected from the sacred page. Created holy, with 
all which the conception carries with it, we see 
him fall. But we see him worth saving. Primal 
promise succeeds primal sin. The hurter is to be 
hurt himself, and the one hurt is to be rescued 
from the clutch of the evil one. All old literatures 
as well as all modern religions have to account in 
some way for sin. But the moral element gather- 
ing about the moral fact, which must also have 
physical expression, stands up and out and apart 
in the biblical story. Genesis is not a mere his- 
toric reply to the curious questions pressing all 
ancient literatures for an answer. It is a moral 
presentation of truth incarnated in physical fact. 
It shows the love of God with reference to right- 
eousness, and equally the greatness of man to be 
able to bring about an evil so disastrous as sin. 
The mingled grandeur and guilt of man stand 
forth. 

And then begins the idea of human restoration 

i68 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



which is to be elaborated through all history. 
And the whole idea of securing this rescue through 
a family which in the fullness of time is to produce 
**the Man," discloses the divine trend. Every 
step from the Genesis through the whole history 
of Israel is the onward march of a divine thought. 
True, God controls all history, and every nation 
contributes its quota, often unconsciously and un- 
willingly, to his vast plan. But there is that in 
this Hebrew history which has a specially distinct 
purpose ; a peculiarly divine ordering ; a definite 
direction ; an unfolding by all ordinary and all 
supernatural events, which makes each step equally 
a new fulfillment and a new prophecy. The events 
have guidance. The series of men have guidance. 
There is a purpose and a spirit in all of the history 
that is unique. The things are controlled as is 
also the story of them. The tone of the two ex- 
actly harmonizes. He who guided the event 
guided the record. They live and breathe and 
have their being together. The Pentateuchal 
sobriety, the monotheism everywhere shown in 
contrast with the polytheism that dominates all 
other religions, the documents, their literary form 
in accord with those of their age, and yet so widely 
unlike them in their entire scope and spirit and 
purpose — these are all the fit introduction to the 
subsequent books of the national history. And 
these succeeding books never once fall below the 
high key on which the whole divine song has 
been pitched. 

The book of Judges shows how the leading 
personages of the Hebrew religion defended not 

169 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

only their land but their faith, in that rude and 
stirring time. Its idea is not chronology. It is 
evidently a compilation. It has its incidents which 
throw more light on its times than mere chronicles 
could do. The moral ideas of sin with its penal- 
ties, of repentance with its reformations, of deliv- 
erances which foretell some far-off Deliverer, these 
make up a book which is so unlike the expected 
memorabilia of such a period, that it has been 
called '^ a philosophy of history with its abounding 
illustrations." The trend is definite, and is even 
stronger than in the Pentateuch. Deborah's song 
has had equal recognition for its poetry and its 
religion. It is a sacred war-song. It throbs with 
moral purpose. God's plan for the nation and his 
unslumbering providence for his Israel, are the 
sustained harmonies which befit a book that follows 
the Hexateuch. 

Samuel, by whomsoever written, does not de- 
cline from the high plane. It brings in the work 
and word of a ^^ prophet of the Lord." It intro- 
duces more distinctly the moral purpose to which 
all incidents and personages contribute. The 
splendid period of the monarchy with its promise 
of an unending reign of David's successors — 
which can have no other than a spiritual fulfill- 
ment — lifts the moral idea as illustrated by the 
historical fact into such prominence that there is 
almost universal recognition from this time forth of 
the high, ethical, religious, and even spiritual 
truth which the writers exhibit. What shall be 
said of the *^ prophets," except this, that they 
combine with their immediate and local reference 

170 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



a constant outlook to the great spiritual facts that 
are farther on. Oriental in form, they are uni- 
versal in spirit. Seeing perhaps always something 
near at hand, they are illuminated by the constant 
vision of things yet to come. The temporal is of 
worth because the light of the eternal rests upon 
"it. The prophet sees in one glance the temporal 
and the spiritual. The vital eye sees the everlast- 
ing truth in the local incident. The principle 
shines through the fact. God and man, and the 
eternal principles which make up their moral rela- 
tion, appear and reappear. Time is seldom an ele- 
ment. Events are related in character rather 
than in historical order. Sorrows center in the 
sorrowing Christ. Calamities look forward to final 
doom. Deliverances which are political are linked 
with the deliverance to be accorded when the great 
Deliverer shall come. All events have infinite 
suggestiveness. The gospel is preached before- 
hand in its principles, and sometimes strange 
flashes in the details of the life of the coming 
Christ surprise and startle us. Surely here, if no- 
where else, one may discern the abounding proofs 
of a divine inspiration. 

And what shall be said of the Psalms, the one 
great devotional book of the world ? Backward 
they look, and forward as well. They involve the 
great events of the national history. They were 
impossible but for the previous inspiration. We 
do not look in these poems for direct citation from 
Pentateuch and historic narration. Quotation must 
be not that of incident, but of the emotion the inci- 
dent awakens. Poetic quotation is not of the fact, 

171 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

but of the feeling that answers to the fact. It 
grasps the spirit of an occasion. It voices the 
public feeling of a nation as well as the inner ex- 
perience of a human soul. It is quotation of the 
inner meaning of an event. It sets forth in its 
own way the atmosphere and the tone which made 
the historic facts a possibility. Such a form of 
citation is not especially convincing to some minds. 
But to other men, with strong sympathetic 
natures, who see what of fact is involved in a pe- 
culiar mood of national or personal song, this 
evidence is more than equal to statement. Such 
persons are able to put themselves back in thought 
and feeling among the scenes of Hebrew history. 
They do not ask, as some have done, for citation 
by word or by deed from the Pentateuch. Verbal 
historic quotation they would no more expect in 
the Psalms than in a modern English poem. They 
feel the breath of the old incidents. They see 
how impossible some of these psalms are, apart 
from the former history and the previously known 
revelation. There is a vital eye ; there is a vital 
ear. There is a sensitiveness to the inner mean- 
ing of events as expressed in song. Such men 
have a more convincing evidence, in the tone and 
temper, in the moral atmosphere and in the holy 
aspiration which breathes throughout the older 
psalms about the historicity of the Pentateuchal 
facts, than could be given them in any other way. 
And when to the backward glance there is added 
the prophetic onlook, the conviction of a divine 
inspiration grows stronger than ever. There are 
flashes of the gospel day. The glint is in the east. 

172 



THE WARRANTED DEDUCTIONS 



That way comes up the sun. It flecks the morn- 
ing clouds. They begin to burn and glow. Up 
into the heavens spring the swift rays. The edge 
of the sun is on the horizon. 

It is worthy of notice that of all the references 
to the Old Testament in the New, nearly one half 
are from the Psalms. The vicissitudes of the in- 
dividual life, its deepest sorrows and highest joys, 
have found their best expression through all the 
Christian centuries in this book. On the cross our 
Lord quotes from a psalm which is a sufferer's 
plaint ; and at Pentecost, Peter, chief spokesman 
of the apostolic band, cites the remarkable proph- 
ecy which he finds in a resurrection psalm. About 
the Psalms as a whole, Robertson has happily said 
^* that which in all ages has been the answer of 
the soul to God must have been inspired by the 
Spirit of God." 

And the later books of Ezra and Nehemiah are 
lifted above mere annals by the pervasive thought 
which throbs through them. Israel returned to 
God's favor, Israel called again to a new and 
purer national and spiritual life, these are the core 
of the historic events. The books glow with the 
memories of a former time. The old facts are 
assumed. They alone make the new history pos- 
sible. The Samaritan is found with his Penta- 
teuch, which is substantially the Hebrew Penta- 
teuch. The old rivalry over the Pentateuchal facts, 
which both not only admit but insist upon and 
claim as their special inheritance, — a rivalry which 
continues until the New Testament times, — shows 
not only the existence, but the inspiring thought of 

173 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

the former ages. No Jewish code, just then 
written out, would have been accepted by the Sa- 
maritans. Both hold the ancient records in rever- 
ence; ''but salvation is of the Jews," who alone 
carry out and carry on the inspiring thought of 
the Pentateuch into the larger prophetic outlook 
which sees the '' salvation " of the gospel day. 

The inspiring thought of the New Testament 
is, in some respects, more evident than that of the 
Old. There is less of prophecy, but more of ful- 
fillment. Those who rejoice to see a process in 
each of its growing steps, who see special design 
in the development of fact and of thought, will 
delight to trace the inspiring Spirit of God in the 
Old Testament ; while those who care little for 
root and branch and leafage and bud, but rejoice 
in the full flowering of the plant, will see the 
greater proofs of divine inspiration in the New 
Testament Christ as portrayed in the four Gospels. 
They recognize in the Evangelists, the Lord the 
Christ ; and in the Acts and Epistles, the Lord 
the Spirit. Seen either way, from the point of 
prophetic outlook or from the backward glance 
over the whole illuminated course, the view is that 
of divine events divinely ordered, and the series 
culminating in Christ. And such a series of 
revelations has its fit correlative in a record as care- 
fully ordered as were the events themselves. 



174 



CHAPTER V 

THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

The Bible, in one aspect of it, is a purely human 
book. It is written in human language. It is 
composed by members of the 
human race. It addresses it- m^^^^^^ ^* 
self to the human reason and Jf, ^^f-^ 

to the human soul. It shows 
marks of literary work in which the writers make 
use of their own individuality in selecting their 
favorite words, in composing their special sentences, 
in marshaling their gathered facts, and in their 
whole method of reasoning upon them. Without 
consulting the book, just by the ring of the words, 
you know that certain sentences are from Paul 
rather than from John. And just as we say that 
a stanza of a poem '^ sounds like Milton or Pope 
or Tennyson," so we say that a given paragraph 
sounds like Isaiah or David or Peter. These men 
write history, compose poetry, utter discourses, and 
dictate letters, precisely as do other men. Their 
style in its excellencies and defects is matter for 
fit literary criticism. This prophet uses rough 
language and that one shows the marks of finest 
culture. In one writer you have pure, in the other 
impure, Hebrew or Greek. One writer shows 
large learning, while another shows its absence. 
One is logical, another is experiential, and a third 

I7S 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

is poetical. In the historical books the studied 
work of the compiler arxd the practised hand of a 
careful writer are sometimes clearly manifest. 
The authors are men, often of industry, for their 
work shows that they have compared and collated 
and accepted and rejected, in disposing of their 
material. They have consulted authorities and 
come to conclusions. They are sometimes eye- 
witnesses and sometimes they take testimony. 
They compose, they edit, they re-edit. They work 
on human lines of investigation, as Prescott and 
Macaulay have done. And all this painstaking 
work, so far from interfering with the act of the 
inspiring Spirit of God, is the very kind of thing 
we should most expect him to superintend and en- 
dorse. He is the Spirit of wisdom, and we should 
expect him to use wise methods. 

Nor does this recognition of the obvious fact of 
human labor and thought and skill in the produc- 
tion of the book necessitate the reception of the 
*^ critical analysis" which different persons, with 
different results, have sought to apply to portions 
of the Bible. We need not confound these special 
claims with the broader claims of a due gathering 
of material from authentic sources by careful 
biblical writers. The attempt to sort out the 
material and assign various portions of it to some 
four or five imaginary persons, designated by let- 
ters such as ^^J " and ^'P" may be held in abey- 
ance. Were this to be proven — as it never could 
be, even were it true — it should not be considered 
as in any way detracting from the human reliability 
or the divine endorsement of the history. 

176 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

Most persons will ask why only three or four 
are named as the originals from which the authors 
drew their information ? Why not, if we are to 
do this work at all, recognize dozens of these 
briefer narratives which supply the material for 
some Old Testament Luke to ''set in order." The 
results of assigning certain portions of the Mosaic 
history to these few imaginary persons, are made 
the basis of amusing screeds. Prof. Meade, in his 
"Realsham" analysis of the ''Epistle to the Ro- 
mans," and Prof. Green, in his supposed analysis 
of the "Parable of the Prodigal Son," have made 
legitimate sport of this whole style of professed 
scholarship. In certain literary circles the same 
thing has been attempted with a chapter of Milton 
and a play of Shakespeare, and with similar ab- 
surd results. All this shows how any special form 
of scholarship can mislead and can be misled 
when its conjectures are not checked by related 
learning. The same style of apportionment has 
not yet been applied to the new "finds" of cunei- 
form inscriptions ; and yet these very methods of 
composition are found among the Babylonian and 
Assyrian tablets, and are shown to be simply a 
literary fashion of the ante-biblical times, and so 
calling for no analysis at all to explain them. The 
method of Genesis was a method then recognized 
as historical. But these alleged results of critical 
analysis, whether they shall be found to have any 
real worth or are held as valueless, have done for 
us at least one good service. They have given 
fresh emphasis to the fact of a human element in 
the composition of the sacred Scriptures. They 
M 177 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

have made men more willing to see the traces of 
the successive centuries in the successive writers. 
They have shown how the same word comes to 
have a series of meanings, until they all culminate 
in one grand spiritual interpretation ; so that the 
word almost, and sometimes altogether, drops the 
originally coarse and material meaning. The newer 
time fills out the word and glorifies it, as Jesus 
uses it in the New Testament. And all this makes 
the book the more thoroughly human ; for we see 
it in the very act of growing with the growing 
advancement of the human race as the thought of 
God unfolds itself to men and in men. 

To many minds this human element is at first 
very disquieting. They have been wont to em- 
phasize the divine element in the Bible, not too 
much — that w^ere impossible — but too exclusively. 
Due consideration would lead such hesitating per- 
sons to see that the divine element is all the more 
obvious because it so wisely employs the best 
human learning and wisdom and genius. Would 
God the Holy Spirit be more conspicuously divine 
in his work by employing some Israelite who had 
not known how to write rather than in employing 
the wise Moses ? Surely he were a foolish man 
who should choose ignorance rather than wisdom 
in one who was to present his cause before a 
human tribunal. And when God comes to the 
world with a plea addressed to thoughtful men, he 
is not going to do an act that would sully his 
wisdom in neglecting to use a man like Moses, 
who is careful in historical research, broad in legal 
knowledge, and ripe in religious experience. 

178 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

It is alleged that *^to err is human/' that im- 
perfect man, using imperfect language, is liable to 
mistake ; that the human element is necessarily 
an imperfect, fallible, and erroneous element. Let 
us look at this objection very carefully. For if 
this is a fact it follows that God cannot give a re- 
liable communication of his will to man. It fol- 
lows that, while man can give his thought to his 
fellow-man with such accuracy that life or death 
depends upon the communication, God cannot do 
the thing that man daily does. It follows, more- 
over, that all human testimony as well as divine 
teaching, since couched in human language, is un- 
reliable. The uncertainty of all knowledge, the 
doubtfulness of all reasoning, the impotency of all 
conclusions on every subject on which man has 
ever thought or spoken, are assured, if this principle 
is once admitted ; and so far as truth is concerned 
truth may be true and we be unable to know it 
true. 

Now it is of course admitted that some witnesses 
are perjured, and some testimony false, and some 
reasonings are fallacious, and some conclusions are 
erroneous. But we men are not lunatics and the 
human reason is not a fraud. We are so made as 
to be capable of certainty. We are so constituted 
as to be able to believe in the integrity of our 
senses, in the sanity of our minds, and the reli- 
ability of our knowledge. We are compelled to 
believe without a special divine revelation that two 
and two are four. A thousand miracles from God 
in attestation would not convince us more fully of 
it. No added inspiration of all the prophets and 

179 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

apostles would make us more sure of that fact. 
There is no world in which two and two can make 
five. In God's mind as in ours two and two are 
four. We cannot be more certain than we are of 
this truth — a truth which we know solely by our 
human faculties. 

It is so elsewhere. Trials in the court-room, 
when conducted under accepted and proved rules 
of evidence, have reached in many cases a positive 
conclusion, and the verdict is an absolute certainty ; 
and all who know the evidence are necessarily 
obliged to own the righteousness of the decision. 
It would be impossible not to do so. It matters 
not that there have been sometimes mis-trials and 
unjust verdicts. The failures only make us more 
cautious in our legal methods. There is just 
enough liability to mistake to quicken diligence 
and make us the more certain of results that are 
without error. In all processes of investigation, 
the element of possible mistake is a safeguard 
against undue haste; an incentive to honest and 
faithful work. Its outcome, when given due re- 
gard, is greater certainty. It serves us, with other 
human elements, in our investigations by keeping 
us on our watch against admitting false testimony 
and coming to rash conclusions. We are so made 
up by the very constitution of our minds, that we 
must give credit to evidence, must be convinced 
by human testimony in certain cases. There is a 
truthful element in some men's work; a reliability 
about some kinds of human evidence ; a conviction 
of certainty about results that are attained under 
some circumstances. This human proof is so ab- 

i8o 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

solute that we act upon it in cases where reputa- 
tion, fortune, and even life itself is involved. 
About some human things we are certain. They 
are proved. No more evidence is needed. To 
have a thing proved, even if the testimony for it 
is purely human, is the end of all controversy. 
We are so made as to rely upon sure proof ; and 
we do this, if we have a sound and healthy mind, 
without one doubt. Now then, if this is so, surely 
God, in giving us the Bible, will not neglect to 
give us this very trustworthy form of evidence 
just where it will be to us the most convincing; 
just where he has made us to be capable of finding- 
such strong intellectual satisfactions. The Bible 
knows the men it addresses. Let us be glad that 
God has made use of this method of proof so re- 
liable elsewhere and so desirable here. To have 
failed of giving us these mental satisfactions along 
the line where we certainly should have expected 
him to meet us, would have appeared very strange 
and even unreasonable. And though the old adage 
remains, **to err is human," yet there are circum- 
stances where the theoretical fallibility is practically 
eliminated from the results — circumstances where 
a thing proved cannot be more than proved. 

We are met, in this human element of the Bible, 
along the line of our most positive convictions. 
We are used to this kind of proof, we expect it. 
We are not foiled in our just anticipations of the 
certainty to be derived from human testimony. 
And so, as we gather up the testimony of eye- 
witnesses, of competent scholars of the olden 
time, of kings and priests, poets and prophets, 

i8i 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

evangelists and apostles, we find a peculiarly satis- 
fying proof that God has wrought the work of an 
inspired volume by human hands. There is a 
magnificent trend in all this consenting human 
evidence. The Author of the Bible, who saw 
the end from the beginning, and who knows what 
is in man, has consulted our human needs, taken 
our human methods of proof, and given us evi- 
dence along expected and guaranteed lines. He 
has spoken here in human literature. This human 
element in the Bible, instead of a source of weak- 
ness, is an evidence of strength. It is indeed an 
argument gained from what some have hastily 
called an unpromising field. But it is certainly 
true that the element of supposed fallibility and 
uncertainty is so managed as to assure us of the 
carefulness, and so the larger likelihood of accuracy 
in the biblical writers. And what elsewhere and 
in some other circumstances would be errancy, 
becomes under these peculiar conditions a contri- 
bution toward a belief in the inerrancy of the book 
itself. 

And yet further; the Bible needs to have the 
human element in order to be capable of any divine 
inspiration. There might be a revelation to men 
who had no written language ; but the inspiration 
of the record of that revelation would need, in 
order to its existence and accuracy, the human 
element. It would require literary form of some 
kind and degree. It would crave some capacity 
in man to receive and to communicate to others 
the revelation, however God should make it. This 
human element is the one on which alone God's 

182 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

Holy Spirit can lay hold. The Bible must be a 
human book in order to be an inspired book. We 
do not subtract from its accuracy, its inerrancy, its 
infallibility, or its inspiration, when we insist upon 
this human element. We add the very ingredient 
that otherwise were wanting. The book is not to 
be divided into parts, one part human and another 
part divine. It is not in spots from man, and in 
other spots from God. To be of God anywhere it 
must everywhere be of man. Mr. Spurgeon has 
said : *^ The eternal Word, Jesus Christ, is both 
human and divine, but no man can say where the 
divine ends and the human begins. So in the 
written word of God, every word is both human 
and divine in source ; but no man can define the 
limits between the human and the divine." 

A revelation without human means is indeed 
conceivable. There is revelation in suns and stars, 
in mountains and plains. There was revelation at 
Horeb and Carmel. But inspiration requires man 
in the use of his mental powers. It is mind mov- 
ing upon mind ; soul in contact with soul ; one 
personality projecting itself upon another; one 
person's thought and feeling, and it may be his 
words, entering into another's thinking and feeling 
and speech. It is one person affecting another ; 
but not so that the personality of the other is 
always and necessarily suspended. In some cases, 
it may be, it renders the human mind more acute, 
more susceptible, and more self-conscious. A man 
would not be less a man but more completely a 
man by the inspiration of God. In some few forms 
of the inspiring influence, as in the case of proph- 

183 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

ecy, the requirement may have been for exaltation 
beyond one's self. 

And yet it has been earnestly contended that 
all distant prophecies see a nearer point of hu- 
man vision and a nearer material fulfillment as 
their first meaning ; while the far-off vision is that 
of things seen as having no chronological, but 
only a logical relation ; events seen as connected 
in order of kind rather than in order of time. Let 
us leave it for heathen nations to believe in a 
** divine afflatus," seizing upon men in moments of 
delirium, when the mind is off its balance. The 
lunatic and the man bereft momentarily of his 
reason they thought more likely to be inspired. 
The frenzy of idol worshipers was at the farthest 
remove from the moral sanity of the prophets of 
Jehovah. The seances of the so-called ^' spirit- 
ualist" of our day, wherein the pretence is of the 
overpowering of the medium's mind by some 
*' spirit," are the exact opposite of the sacred occa- 
sions on which holy men spoke as moved by God. 
The paroxysms of nervous devotees may be 
ascribed to heathen gods and to imaginary " spirits." 
But a grand sanity is the preparation of Moses 
and Isaiah and Matthew and John for divine inspi- 
ration. To be '^in the Spirit " is not to be out of 
one's mind. Sense rather than nonsense is a 
characteristic of biblical inspiration. Men wise 
with holy moral wisdom, whose minds grow large 
and clear in the radiance of God, whose hearts 
grow warm under holy love and whose hands and 
feet are swift at his service, are the ones most likely 
to be used by the Holy Spirit of God. These men 

184 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

of the former ages, far from being perfect in per- 
sonal character, were yet the best men in their 
centuries. They were the foremost moral souls, 
and so were likely to get the best of the coming 
advance. They stood highest and so were more 
certain to be struck by the earlier rays of the Sun 
of Righteousness. Not folly but wisdom, not vice 
but virtue, not fanaticism but sense, not ecstatic 
convulsion but the steady moral sanity of men 
calmly but earnestly engaged in God's work — 
these were for the most part the human charac- 
teristics to be seized upon, enlarged, purified, 
guided, and inspired by the Holy Ghost. 

Here too, as everywhere else, we can but mark 
the inspiring activity seeking its end. There is 
steady advance in moral vision. The writers are 
in a series, and one growing movement sweeps 
them on. The breath of God breathes on these 
broad historic fields where we find them. They 
bend, like the yellow corn in autumnal days, when 
stirred by the breeze. You can see the direction 
of the wind and watch its progress over the 
billowy plains. These men are always looking on. 
The vital eye is always growing sharper. You can 
see each steadily growing in a better inspiration 
than the one he supersedes. Moses, one of the 
older, is always the grandest soul personally among 
all the men from Adam to Jesus. But the inspi- 
ration of inferior men, farther on in the series, is 
more advanced than his. Isaiah sees farther and 
gives his age a proto-gospel. David, inferior in 
moral fibre, reaches higher planes than those 
trod by the grander man who led Israel from 

i3s 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Egypt in that most memorable march. For, while 
the inspiring spirit selects best souls, the age must 
also be consulted ; and the inspiration advances, 
though no second Moses appears, till Christ comes. 
So that the inspiration of God is the agency more 
potent than grandeur of powers or personal piety. 
The later prophets see more than their greater sire 
at Pharaoh's court. The divine trend is stronger 
than the human personality. The increasing light 
of divine inspiration is not negligent of goodness, 
and yet is not measured in its degree by the piety 
of the man inspired. 

And when the inspiring spirit ceases this pecu- 
liar work because the book is completed, the whole 
matter of its preservation as so much human liter- 
ature is left to the operation of the same laws as 
govern other productions. The eliminating process 
went on. The more ancient documents seem to 
have perished, except as these books of the Bible, 
differing from all others in their moral purpose, 
took up and preserved the best portions of them. 
It was an instance of the survival of the fittest. 
It was the law of tendency. It was natural selec- 
tion with a moral purpose in it. It kept itself 
afloat on the stream of time while other literature 
sank into oblivion. It is true that there was 
human genius — if you will, a human inspiration 
in it; so that the best Hebrew minds, those most 
likely to be touched by the earlier rays of a divine 
inspiration, were the immortal ones whose memor- 
able works still reflect the light. 

And just because it is human work on one side 
of it, this book is exposed to the same fate as other 

i86 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

noble literature. As in Homer and Virgil, and 
even in our later Shakespeare, there are various 
readings, so the manuscripts occasionally differ, 
though taken as a whole they have wonderful 
agreement. It was fitting that a book just as dis- 
tinctly man's book in some of its features as any 
other, should be treated in the same way as all 
other ancient writings, so far as its preservation is 
concerned. We need not deny a divine provi- 
dence in the preservation of a book which has in it 
also a divine element. But we should expect that 
the human in the Scriptures, produced according 
to the laws of literary method, should be left in 
the main to do battle with destructive agencies, 
exactly as are other volumes of a similar antiquity. 
The fact of a human element, left in part to our 
human preservation, is the warrant for a scholarly 
work which is sometimes known as the ^* higher 
criticism." No name could have been more un- 
fortunate, awaking as it does instant prejudice and 
opposition. The men who have given themselves 
to questions that relate to a genuine test for the 
Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, are not more lofty 
in aim nor of higher scholarship than other bibli- 
cal scholars. One section of these workers have 
confessedly given up prayer. But prayerlessness 
in such inquiries is not only unsympathetic but un- 
scholarly. If the undevout astronomer is mad, 
what shall be said of the undevout biblical critic ? 
But we must remember that the destructive critic 
is not the only nor even the superior critic. The 
questions about documents and dates and origins 
and authors, about books as composite and as re- 

187 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

edited, are not new. The great scholars of former 
times debated them. But they would not have al- 
lowed themselves to be called by any such name 
as '' higher critics," nor permitted their work to be 
called the '' higher criticism." Of large learning, 
the equals of any men now living, they sifted and 
compared and judged. They decided on the 
authenticity and inspiration of the books admitted 
to the canon. Their method was absolutely logi- 
cal before the more modern names of the *' induc- 
tive " and "deductive" methods were bestowed 
upon certain processes of human thought. It was 
not in late centuries that miCn began to reason. 
There were scholars before our own day. Learn- 
ing did not begin with the latter half of the 
nineteenth century. 

But though assumption in these respects has 
awakened prejudice, we must not yield ourselves 
to any reactionary mood. God committed these 
documents to his churches ; and the questions 
about dates and places and texts and versions are 
all of importance. Hitherto the discussion of 
them has tended on the w^hole to confirm rather 
than unsettle. And it will do so we believe in 
time to come. Plain Christians may at first be 
somewhat disturbed. But the final result has al- 
ways been helpful. The foundations stand secure. 
Whatever of light from linguistic criticism or 
archaeological discovery we can gain for the better 
understanding of the Bible, we most gladly wel- 
come. And we owe to devout students along these 
lines a great debt of gratitude ; for while not 
denying the divine element, they have called back 

i88 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

attention to the human element which early- 
Christian scholars had made prominent, but which 
without doubt has not for the past few centuries 
received sufficient emphasis.^ And if occasionally 
a devout man, in this reaction against undue em- 
phasis in the one direction, has gone too far in the 
other, the aim and spirit of the genuine student 
may be named in extenuation. Great scholars in 

1 In the ''Homiletic Review" for January, 1895, Prof. Henry- 
Preserved Smith claims certain results for the '* Higher Criti- 
cism." They are i : "The composite nature of the Historical 
Books." But the fact of composite material was taught by lead- 
ing professors in our theological seminaries half a century ago. 
2. "The composite authorship of the Psalms." But the version 
we have all used for years has as a prefatory remark to the nine- 
tieth psalm, "A Psalm of Moses, the man of God" ; while such 
headings as these are found, "A Psalm of Asaph," "A Psalm of 
the soils of Korah," "A Psalm of Solomon." Surely the ancient 
division of the psalms into five books is no new discovery. And 
their characterization as "Psalms of David," as "Davidic," as 
"of the times of Josiah," "of the age of Ezra and Nehemiah," 
is far from being modern. The assignment may not be accurate, 
but it is certainly ancient. And he would be very bold in asser- 
tion who would say that the last word had been spoken on the 
date or on the authorship of the Psalms. 3. "The wisdom litera- 
ture." But here too, modern investigators are simply treading in 
old footsteps. It will be news, indeed, that scholarship for cen- 
turies has not recognized the fact that Solomon was not the sole 
author of the ' ' Proverbs ' ' and of the ' ' wisdom literature ' ' in 
general. 4. "The post-exilic date of the final redaction of the 
Pentateuch." But even here it is to be noted that so old a com- 
mentator as good, pious Matthew Henry, in his note on Deut. 
34, says, "This chapter was written by Joshua or Eleazar or, as 
Patrick conjectures, by Samuel, who was a prophet, and wrote 
by divine authority." So that these questions are neither newly 
raised nor newly "decided." They are, and are likely to be, in 
the flux of discussion, and neither the ancient nor the modern dog- 
matism on them is warranted. Meanwhile, careful men wait. But 
whatever the outcome, whether of certainty or uncertainty, noth- 
ing essential is really disturbed. The human element is pur- 
posely left as it is by divine wisdom. 

189 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

former times have erred here and there in details ; 
but their general work has been of immense worth 
to the Christian world. And modern scholars 
may have announced prematurely their conclusions 
in biblical science, exactly as scholarly men have 
done in medical and in natural science. We do 
not therefore distrust and discard investigation. 
The general trend in these investigations is unmis- 
takable. The things surrendered are few, the facts 
gained are many. The book is a divine develop- 
ment through good men moved upon by the Holy 
Spirit. 

In the preceding section it is argued that in order 
that the Bible might be capable of being an in- 
spired volume, it must have in 
Section IL j^ ^j^^ human element. It was 

The Divme Ele- . • i -.. i 

. certainly written by men m 

possession of their human fac- 
ulties. Its historic portions bear evidence of 
having been composed under the same mental 
conditions as are exhibited in uninspired books. 
Its writers gathered evidence. They took the tes- 
timony often of eye-witnesses. They were capable 
of being inspired by the Spirit of God, since they 
were possessed of mental and moral faculties. Is 
the other proposition also true, viz. : that the 
divine element is required to make the human 
element reliable in such a book as the Bible ? 

Suppose we consider that what is chiefly and 
primarily inspired is a great series of connected 
facts, partly common and partly uncommon. These 
facts constitute Hebrew history and culminate in 

190 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

Jesus Christ and his apostles. It might at first be 
thought that the ordinary facts in this series would 
require only the human element in the record of 
them, while divine inspiration might be needed 
for those which were supernatural. But what if 
the ordinary facts are so related to the extra- 
ordinary, the common to the supernatural, and 
both so related to the great underlying plan of 
them, and so connected with the divinely unify- 
ing thought that throbs through them all, that the 
kind of narrative which is required needs the divine 
supervision in the smallest as well as in largest 
things. In a narrative of things so related to each 
other and to one great plan, the divine element is 
needed to correct the human. 

Out of my window in the city I look and see 
two men engaged in an altercation on the street 
below. From my position I see it all and see it 
accurately. Toward the combatants runs a re- 
porter from a side street and sees one part of the 
affair. Soon comes another and he sees the mid- 
dle of the transaction. Both come to my room to 
make up their notes, knowing that I have seen the 
whole affair and am able to judge accurately of the 
quarrel. Each writing honestly of what he has 
seen is liable to use some word or phrase which 
does not correctly represent the matter. I do not 
write one word of their report, but I supervise the 
whole. If a single preposition gives a wrong im- 
pression, I suggest a better and they adopt it. 

Let us open the Bible and take an incident at 
random that is not miraculous. It shall be the 
fact of Jesus going to dine on the Sabbath at a 

191 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Pharisee's house. That incident can be recorded 
in such a way as to be entirely out of sympathy 
with the whole plan of Christ's life. Without 
using one false word a writer can so set down the 
incident as to smirch the whole character of Jesus 
Christ. It can be so recorded that the Lord will 
seem to be a Sabbath breaker. It can make him 
a glutton. It can make him a winebibber. It can 
make him favor Pharisaism. It can leave the im- 
pression that he courted the rich at the expense 
of the poor. It can invert every principle on 
which his character was founded. Two or three 
such scenes described in unfortunate language 
would not only neutralize the power of any in- 
cident for good, but make it a positive harm in 
all the coming centuries. Superintendence to 
bring the record into line with God's dominating 
thought is clearly needed. The fact to all the 
world, save the few nearest concerned, is the fact 
as seen in the record of the Gospels. A single 
unguarded word in the record would leave the 
wrong impression on the ages. Even in common 
things the tone of the narrative means more than 
the facts themselves. 

Hallam's personal thought in his '' Constitu- 
tional History " tinges every fact he names. 
Green in his ** History of the English People " 
cannot conceal if he would his whole point of 
view. His tone is as distinct as are his facts. In 
the Bible the inspired facts are in line of an in- 
spired Divine thought. The Thinker must guide 
the free writer in every turn of a sentence, or as 
well have no inspired fact and thought. Did you 

192 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

ever stand beside the pilot of a noble ship as she 
plowed the billows, a thing of life ? Did you ever 
watch his eye as it glanced at the compass, then 
up at the sails, then over the side as he saw the 
coming wave ? If everything goes right he stands 
motionless. But if he sees that a flaw of the 
freshening wind is about to change his vessel's 
prow but a trifle from the true course, how quickly 
he causes the turn of the wheel to meet the new 
deflecting force. Or if a broad wave gathering on 
her quarter is about to strike his ship from the 
line of her progress, swiftly the wheel is reversed. 
And thus amid all the disturbing influences of 
wind and wave the pilot guides the ship surely and 
safely in her unchanged path. So God guides the 
men through whom he will make known his will. 
Amid all human imperfections, amid the veering of 
winds and the tossing of the waves the helmsman 
never steers wildly, never loses his control, never 
is deflected from his course. Man's book has 
God's superintendence in all its parts. 

And when we come to the miraculous, this, 
though not more necessary, is even more evident. 
Human writers unassisted in their record of the 
supernatural are sure to blunder. They are com- 
petent witnesses of fact. They would be good 
annalists. But the historian is far more than a 
writer of annals. The Gospels are histories. They 
are connected narratives infused with a thought. 
No honesty could save an unassisted writer from 
mistake by some turn of a phrase, some ill-judged 
and inaccurate word in describing the miraculous. 
For the miracle does not stand alone. It has fit 
N 193 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

time, place, and circumstance. It has its distinc- 
tive character, its peculiar setting in the teaching, 
its unique position in the divine evolution of the 
divine idea. A miracle is never a mere buttress. 
It is not even a stone in the foundation. It is a 
thing growing out of the system. It is not a sup- 
port of the revelation, but a development in it. 
It is moral fact incarnate in physical form. It will 
have to be handled with care in the record. If the 
primary inspiration is in the fact as one of a series, 
the inspiration in the thought comes close upon it ; 
and both demand superintendence, guidance, cor- 
rection, accuracy. 

And surely no one can dispute the ability of 
God so to inspire men. That he can leave them 
free to write and yet can guide their writing is, to 
say the least, possible. We may go further and 
claim its probability. We are warranted by the 
former citations in these discussions to claim this 
as a fact. Nor is the fact invalidated because the 
same thing does not occur in the experience of 
any or of all men to-day. It is not to be under- 
stood as the normal condition of mankind, nor of 
these writers of the Scriptures. Not at all times 
were they commanded, ^^ Write the things thou 
sawest in a book." Not always when Jeremiah 
speaks does the Lord say, ^' Stand in the gate and 
proclaim this word" (Jer. 7 : i). Not of all Moses 
may write, is it said that ''the book of the law" is 
to be ''put into the ark." Isaiah doubtless wrote 
many a sentence ; but it is only of a certain series 
of things that he is told to " Write it in a book." 
Not always is the prophetic hand of Elisha on the 

194 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

arm of Joash as he draws the bow. But the in- 
spiring Spirit at times made use of the chosen in- 
strument. That he should select foremost men 
to reveal truth by them is only what we should ex- 
pect. In other departments than religion the 
action of great genius in its highest reaches is 
often a wonder to the men themselves and can 
scarcely be understood by others. It is easier to 
describe than to define what is meant by human 
inspiration as known to poet, musician, orator, and 
writer. They know, but they cannot tell it. Even 
as to those sudden intuitions, discoveries, disclo- 
sures, those revelations of the mind to itself as to 
the way in which a given thing can best be done ; 
that surprising insight which in some gifted mo- 
ments enables men to see what was dark before, 
that quick flash of sunlight on the perplexity that 
had baffled our study for days and weeks ; that un- 
raveling and clearing of a tangled skein of 
thought; that glad heart-throb when an idea is 
born, a thought struck out, an invention perfected 
— even as to these inspirations of human genius, 
it is not easy to offer any careful and exact defi- 
nition. The great inventors and discoverers and 
poets and painters and orators cannot tell you 
what it is they feel. They can only give us some 
general account of the state of mind in which 
they are when seized upon with the idea which 
they have given to the world. They say it must 
be felt in order to be understood.^ 

1 Mozart describing the state of mind in which musical compo- 
sition was to him most lively and successful says: "Then, the 
thoughts come streaming in upon me most fluently, whence or 

195 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Now if we take the case of the most extreme 
demand for a divine inspiration, viz., that of proph- 
ecy, we can gain, from these intimations given in 
human inspiration, some reassuring hints. We can 
see its trend. In most cases, some would claim in 
all, the prophets were in their sanest moods. Con- 
scious of more than self, they do not lose self- 
consciousness. It shows that the divine inspiration 
did not so enwrap them as to destroy or even dis- 
tort the usual operations of their minds, when we 
find them while under its influence affected nor- 
mally as well. The case of Ezekiel, who remained 
"astonished for seven days" (Ezek. 3:15) shows 
the man in full possession of his usual faculties. 
He is not receiving any mechanical inspiration. 
He is no ''rapt seer." He understands enough of 
his own message to be profoundly stirred thereby. 
He is no passive ''amanuensis," no mere "pen of 
God," no mere "scribe of an unknown influence," 
no " machine for God's touch." He has intelli- 
gent consciousness of what is going on about 
him and revealed in him. He has not been " lost 
in an overpowering inspiration." 

Daniel, by his river Ulai, was also " astonished " 
at his vision (Dan. 8 : 27). Habakkuk "trembled " 
as he foretold the terrors God would bring ac- 
cording to his words ; and when mercy was shown 
him as sure to come to his people at their repent- 
ance, he cried out, " I will greatly rejoice in the 

how is more than I can tell. Then follows the clang of the dif- 
ferent instruments ; then, if not disturbed, the thing grows greater, 
broader, clearer. I see the whole like a beautiful picture. This is 
delight. '' 

196 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

Lord/' We need not deny a verbal; if we reject 
a mechanical theory of the divinely prophetic in- 
fluence. We may decline to accept any theory, 
holding ourselves closely to the facts. Enough in 
this connection to note that the prophets never 
claim to be other than themselves. They are men ; 
but men inspired of God. 

On the other hand, while not losing their con- 
sciousness, they do not always understand all their 
words contain. The meaning of their message must 
not be fully measured by what they understood of 
it. It had a fullness beyond them and often be- 
yond their day. They saw the nearer, but not 
always the farther fact. It is merely a curious 
question for us to inquire how far they and the 
men of their time understood prophecies which 
were to be full of unfolding for all time and 
eternity. The larger and better question for us is 
not what they thought, but what is God's thought 
in these prophecies. Message is larger than mes- 
senger. All time is larger than their time. God's 
intention rather than their understanding is our 
inquiry as we study the words that came from him. 
To read such words, shutting off God above and 
the Christian centuries beyond, and to ask only 
how they and the men of their time would under- 
stand them, may be good secular scholarship, but 
it is not biblical scholarship. It will do in other 
history with merely secular documents as its basis, 
but not here. Here, to leave out the inspiration 
of God, is to seek sunlight by ignoring the sun. 

Caiaphas uttered a prophecy. He meant one 
thing by it, God meant another. He intended to 

197 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

incite to murder. God's spirit in the record ex- 
plains the profound intimation of Christ's sacrificial 
death given through the official head of the Hebrew 
hierarchy. **This he spake not of himself, but 
being high priest that year, he prophesied that 
Jesus should die for that nation, and not for that 
nation only, but that also he should gather together 
in one the children of God that were scattered 
abroad." In this case at least the inspiration must 
have extended to the words themselves. It shows 
God's choice of an author, Caiaphas. It shows a 
thought in God's mind wholly different from that 
in the mind of the human author. This instance, 
though peculiar in some aspects, is singularly in- 
structive as a whole. It is a passage urged with 
great force by those who would put a special em- 
phasis on inspiration as found mainly in the words. 
They urge that in this instance and in a few others 
in which bad men are divinely inspired we are 
shown that inspiration is sometimes in the language 
rather than in the man, and that the divine au- 
thority is co-extensive with the writing. They 
urge that the only instance in which the specific 
word ^' inspiration " occurs, names not the thought 
but the writing; that it is the '^scripture,'* i. e, 
the writing, and not the sense of it, that is *^ God- 
inspired." It may be true that the words are 
usually accompanied by the thought on the part 
of the writer, but not always so, and not in any 
case necessarily so.-^ And yet may not these few 

^ Those who hold to "verbal" inspiration, i, e.^ inspiration of 
words, are wont to quote the opening words of Leviticus, "And 
Jehovah called unto Moses," the word denotes " speaking with 

198 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

instances be unduly pressed ? May they not be 
**the exception that proves the rule"? They 
simply do not show the usual process of divine 
inspiration through a sympathetic soul. And if 
the general language of the Bible in such phrases 
as **thus saith the Lord" would at first reading 
seem to lay an emphasis upon words, it by no 
means excludes the underlying thought. Possibly 
we cannot have a theory broad enough to cover 
every instance. We are not bound to have any 
theory that is hard and fast on this subject. We 
see facts. We trace a trend. The trend is from 
God. Dr. Garbett (Boyle Lectures, 1862) says: 
'' The kind of this divine guidance may vary in 
the different portions of the written word. But it 
can never be lacking to any part. The divine in- 
spiration will not be found in portions here and 
there, but like the human element it will be every- 
where in such a book recording such a series of 
facts as is the Bible. The one all-pervading ele- 
ment is as needful as the other; nor in such a 

an audible voice. ' ' If this be allowed, then the method in this 
particular book is that of direct oral dictation. It is claimed that 
this is primarily an inspiration of words, and only secondarily of 
thought. But the further question of the inspiration of the writing 
out of these inspired words which had been dictated is still open. 
And such usage in one case would not settle the question in other 
cases. And yet the whole book of Leviticus is dictated, except 
in two brief episodes, viz., the consecration of Aaron and the 
punishment of two priests. Perhaps this case, so unlike that 
usual elsewhere in which reason, memory, judgment, and person- 
ality are all employed, will best illustrate the view urged in a 
former chapter, that no one theory of inspiration can be carried 
consistently through the entire Bible. Trend covers all theories 
with its recognition of each of them as having an element of 
truth. 

199 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

book can you have the one without the other. 
The divine element, or the part belonging to God 
in the composition of the sacred Scripture, is to 
be maintained with equal distinctness. 

^^This divine element includes (i) the selection 
of the writers, with their special peculiarities of 
circumstance and character for their given work, 
and their education for it ; (2) their instruction in 
the subject-matter of their writings, alike by the 
revelation of what was previously unknown to 
them, by the verification of knowledge possessed 
by them through ordinary human channels, and 
by the selection of the things to be written and 
the things to be omitted from the writing. As a 
general rule the sacred writers were conscious and 
intelligent agents, understanding more or less per- 
fectly the meaning of their own message; but 
cases have been specifically excepted in order to 
prevent our limiting the sense of the words written 
by the intention of the human writers. These 
two instances are found in John 11 : 15 and i 
Peter i : 1 1 . 

'* Hence it follows that the divine element in- 
cludes (3) the guidance of the Spirit in the selection 
of the words employed by the sacred writers. If 
the divine inspiration acted only in communicating 
truth to the sacred writers, and did not extend to 
their communication of this divinely given truth 
to others, it is certain that we possess only a human 
account of a divine revelation, and not the very 
revelation itself. The veracity of the truth trans- 
mitted must be equivalent, neither more nor less, 
to the accuracy of the words which convey it ; (4) 

2CO 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

it involves the absolute truth of all the things 
written. Man is fallible, and liable to make mis- 
takes ; but actually to make mistakes is as unneces- 
sary to the completeness of the human element as 
not to make mistakes is absolutely essential to the 
divine. The Bible may be truly the work of man, 
and yet be true ; but if it be not certainly true it 
cannot also be the work of God. The concurrence 
of the human part of Scripture and the divine part 
of Scripture is thus perfect throughout. It is not, 
however, the concurrence of two equals, but of a 
superior and an inferior. Man is necessarily the 
subordinate instrument and God necessarily the 
originating and controlling agent. Hence it follows 
that as the existence of what is divine in Scripture 
is no sound argument against its being human, so 
the existence of what is human in Scripture is no 
sound argument against its also being divine.'' 

In a former section the claims made by the 
Scriptures themselves to a divine inspiration have 
been set forth. So too the claims of the New 
Testament that *^ all Scripture," i. e.y Old Testa- 
ment, '^ is given by inspiration of God," have been 
cited. Christ's promise to inspire has been ex- 
amined ; and the declarations of apostolic writers 
that their words were not merely human but the 
word of God, have been perhaps sufficiently 
quoted. The only exception alleged is that in 
which Paul for a specific thing alleges that he 
speaks rather than the Lord, i. e., the Lord Jesus 
Christ. But he is applying principles in which one 
may not follow unbending rules aside from circum- 
stances. So far from denying his own inspiration, 

20I 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

he asserts that the Lord allows him to give advice 
rather than command ; that some things the Lord, 
i. e.y the Lord Jesus, did not during his earthly 
life, expressly enjoin. Indeed the whole drift of 
the apostle in the few cases cited is to assert in 
the most positive form his inspiration elsewhere 
as direct ; and in these cases to assert his inspira- 
tion as inspired advice in matters where Jesus had 
not laid down express commandment. The Holy 
Spirit may equally inspire both command and 
counsel. 

But in addition to the direct promises of Jesus,^ 
the position in which the apostles found themselves 
as representatives of the new religion after their 
Lord's departure is one of such singular responsi- 
bility that they could not do without large meas- 
ures of the inspiring Spirit. They needed this in- 
spiration not only in writing but in planning and 
in directing. This was their constant reliance in 
their work. They were to take no special thought 
or care, but it was to be given them what to say ; 
and the ground of this singular prohibition and 
promise was, '' it shall be the Spirit of your Father 
that speaketh in you." They were to be endued 
for their work *^with the power from on high/V 



^ The promised inspiration to apostles is recorded in John 14 : 
16, 17, 26; 15 : 26, 27 ; 16 : 13-15 ; Acts 1:8; Matt. 16 : 18, 
19 ; 18 : 18 ; John 20 : 22, 23 ; Matt. lo : 19, 20 ; Mark 13 : II ; 
Luke 12 : 11, 12. 

The corresponding claims of the apostles may be found in such 
scriptures as Acts 4 : 8 ; 11 : 12 ; 15 : 28 ; i Peter I : 12; Gal. 
I : 11-24; 2 : I-14; I Cor. I : I ; I Cor. 2 : 7, ia-13 ; 14 : 3^, 
37; 2 Cor. 3 : 4-6; Gal. 2 : 6-9; 2 Peter 3 : 15, 16; Rev. I : 
10, II. 

202 



THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE ELEMENTS 

The time when they should ''be able to bear it " 
had now come, and Jesus was fulfilling his own 
promise to them of inspiration, as he led them 
"into all truth." Oral speaking as well as written 
word was equally included. Of the two, the latter 
was evidently the more important. A mistake in 
the one might be corrected, but documents could 
not be amended. The writers ask credence on the 
ground of special inspiration, but not on the 
ground of special probity or of peculiar piety. 
The idea of any special ''genius for religion" 
seems never to have occurred to them. They talk 
constantly of being "led by the Spirit" in the 
places whither they go, and of special momentary 
direction of what they shall speak. The tone is 
unmistakable. They claim that those who are of 
God will hear them. And accordingly the early 
Christians did actually receive them on that claim. 
It was not that they were mentally and morally 
above others, nor their writings of higher literary 
or moral worth in themselves. Their writings 
were accepted and honored as the depositories of 
God's Spirit. These books were called " Holy 
Scriptures," " Divine Scriptures," " Scriptures of 
the Lord," "Divine Oracles," "Oracles of the 
Lord," " Old and New Oracles," " Sacred Foun- 
tains," etc., while other books of Christian writers 
were never so called. All the early sects accepted 
certain books as of scriptural authority. All 
appealed to them as final, on the ground of their 
inspiration. The phrase, "Thus saith the Holy 
Spirit" is one used by the apostolic Fathers in 
quoting these books, and the primitive Fathers 

203 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

represent denial of the inspiration of these books, 
whether of the Old or the New Testament, as in- 
fidelity. This acceptance at so early a date of 
these writings as inspired is significant. For we 
can understand how possibly later ages might have 
done this, when centuries of veneration had gath- 
ered about them. But that the very generation 
which heard the story, and those immediately suc- 
ceeding, should have so done, is to be attributed 
to two things : the universal knowledge that this 
inspiration had been promised by Christ, and that 
it was directly claimed by these writers. And 
were we further to remember that it was no easy 
thing for Jews, even for converted Jews, to put 
the New Testament writers on the same level with 
the honored prophets of their lifelong veneration, 
the only explanation of their belief was that they 
knew the broad promise and were ready for the 
broad fulfillment. 



204 



' CHAPTER VI 

DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

There are difficulties in the Bible. These diffi- 
culties are urged as objections to its inspiration. 
The book covers long centuries in which there 
were various ways of computing historic times and 
of recording historic events. It uses dissimilar 
literary methods, which an inexact student is likely 
to confuse. It employs necessarily the peculiar 
forms of expression which were known in the time 
of a given writer. And these peculiar expressions 
of one age grew to be somewhat obscure in the 
next ages, and in a few centuries they formed a 
difficulty for common readers. But slowly the 
students of the Bible and of contemporaneous 
documents are getting to see that these very diffi- 
culties are really confirmations. The objections 
change sides and become delightful auxiliaries of 
faith. Some still remain unsolved. But the past 
experience with difficulties more vexing than any 
that now remain, warrants us in hoping, in all 
cases now existing, for a happy solution. As we 
get back in our thought and feeling to the former 
times, as we put ourselves in the places of the men 
then living, we get abundant confirmation of the 
authenticity of the book, a better guaranteed belief 
that it was written in the times and circumstances 
which it claims for itself, and a larger faith in that 

205 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

marvelous trend by which it is separated, world- 
wide, from all other literature. 

Some of these difficulties, which carefully con- 
sidered become confirmations, must now be 
noticed. 

This element in the Old Testament has occa- 
sioned not a little adverse criticism. God speaks 
« .. J like a man. He does not at 

. ,, ' all times accord well with our 

^ ^ later standards. He walks. He 

talks. He is represented as if having a body. 
He repents. He grows angry. He varies in 
mood. He takes pleasure in the fragrance of 
odors. He has meats set before him. He is pro- 
pitiated by blood. He smiles. He frowns. He 
makes choices seemingly capricious. He directs 
wars. He orders slaughter ; he is very human. It 
is the Homeric and the ante-Homeric method of 
representing the participation of the gods in the 
affairs of men. The tone is peculiar. Jehovah 
may have, like the olden gods, a heaven, and yet 
he is here among men suddenly and swiftly in all 
their extremities. 

But let any student of the old Latin or Greek 
classics tell us what he would think of these poems 
if anthropomorphic ways of speaking had been 
omitted. The absence of this style would be 
positive proof that the said poems were not of the 
date ascribed to them. These v/ays of represen- 
tation are the literary method of the age. They 
are exactly the forms of speech then used. They 
become confirmations of the alleged age in which 

206 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

the poems were produced. The insertion of 
modern ways of speech would be fatal to their 
genuineness. In like manner the Bible in its 
older parts must use the conceptions of the older 
times. In no other way could those ages receive 
any teaching at all. It was necessary to begin on 
their literary level and work upward. 

But, though these forms of speech abound in 
the Bible, the conception is never that of a plural- 
ity of gods. One God, the creator of the heaven 
and the earth, the Sovereign Ruler of things and 
men, is the uniform presentation. He is from the 
outset a moral God. He is the foe of wrong, the 
friend of right. Expressions are often anthropo- 
morphic, and as such have their deficiency. But 
it is not moral deficiency. The biblical ideas throb 
through the language which itself would restrict 
them. Never is the defectiveness wrongfulness. 

Then too, consider how surely the childhood of 
each age seizes on these expressions which some 
would condemn. They are graphic words to the 
boy. He must have them. You cannot teach 
him without using them. They get hold of his 
head and heart. They are the best for him, all 
things considered. He will find objections to 
them by and by, as he will about a hundred other 
forms of speech. If he ever becomes a student 
of idiomatic language, the old familiar figures of 
speech will all be analyzed by him; and every one 
of them be equally faulty. But he must begin 
with what he finds. And he must take the 
methods which all other children take in all other 
ages, when they begin to think and talk of God. 

207 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Nor will the boy grown to manhood ever quite 
decline to use this language. He may fill it full 
of spiritual meaning, but he will retain the old 
anthropomorphic forms. In prayer the grown 
man will be obliged to use them. He will ask 
God to ^^look down propitiously," ** to bend his 
ear," ^^to lift up the light of his countenance," 
**to reach out his hand," ''to bestow his blessing," 
''to guard," ''to watch," — all of which are anthro- 
pomorphic words. So too it is with all those men- 
tal and moral phrases derived from our own human 
faculties and ascribed to God. We are his image in 
mind and soul ; and though in the progress of ideas 
we get a broader conception and fuller expression, 
we do not so much leave the older forms of language 
behind as give them new richness through better 
spiritualization. In the New Testament we find 
their use continued. And while their graphic force 
is not lessened, they are infused with a more gra- 
cious meanmg. The newer, fuller conception ani- 
mates the old words. The tendency is always to 
larger and better conceptions of God. The im- 
perfect was not the erroneous in the olden time. 
It serves to-day as the large outline to be filled out 
by the same spirit in the new dispensation. 

Difficulties about historical time do certainly 
exist in all old literature — the Bible not ex- 
cepted. In a book made up as 

°^ a connected history but by ap- 
propriating all forms of literary work, these diffi- 
culties are largely increased. The date of events 

208 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

and the time of their records are very distinct 
matters of inquiry ; and yet often the differences, 
while not of the least moral importance, are fair 
questions for literary criticism. Sometimes, how- 
ever, large moral questions are involved in this 
matter of dates. Not infrequently there are 
widely different ways of reckoning time in the 
documents which supplied the material for the 
writers. Persian and Babylonian, Assyrian and 
Egyptian dates are given, each starting from a dif- 
ferent point, each computed in a different way. 
Occasionally ** round numbers" are used in a 
speech, and the orator's words are taken down and 
so are liable to be considered as chronologically, 
rather than oratorically, accurate. The Hebrew 
nation had not itself always the same way of not- 
ing the day and the hour, while much that occurred 
before that national life began has only some gen- 
eral claim to historic order. The writers had the 
Semitic carefulness about facts and carelessness 
about dates. Even in the New Testament the 
Gospel writers sometimes mass their material so as 
to set forth a peculiar aspect of Christ, so as to pre- 
sent him now as the miracle worker and now as 
the moral teacher. The Gospels are historic in 
form, but they are memorabilia in fact. The 
writers gather incidents in a fair, general order; 
not, indeed, confusing years, but still leaving open 
the question, in one case at least, as to what ^' feast " 
is meant in a given verse. Questions of harmony 
seem never to have been considered ; and orderly 
arrangement, in some cases, is evidently subor- 
dinate to the special object of the writer. 
o 209 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

But in the older parts of the Old Testament 
this negligence of dates in important matters 
seems very strange until we put ourselves back in 
the place of the writers. The method of record 
seems to be that of the simple graphic statement 
of a fact. The time of the occurrence is often 
assumed as known to the men who first saw the 
narration. And even when the Pentateuch is left 
there are historic difficulties. The only wonder is 
that we do not find more. Take a single instance 
which shows the liability to mistake in the writing 
of numbers. In i Samuel 6 : 19 we read of '^ fifty 
thousand threescore and ten men," where it is im- 
possible that there should have been any such 
number. But the Hebrew and Arabic languages 
permit us to write first the units and then the 
tens and then the hundreds, or to reverse the 
order, and to write the highest first. Hence it is 
equally competent to write *' seventy" and *' fifty" 
and **a thousand" — which may mean either as 
given in our version, or it may mean simply one 
thousand one hundred and seventy. In such lati- 
tude of usage there is immense liability to sad 
over-statements in translation.^ 

A considerable number of alleged inaccuracies 

^ In a note on I Samuel 6, by Dr. Kirkpatrick, in ' ' Cambridge 
Bible, '^ we read: "Such errors as this, to which the text of any 
ancient book is liable in process of transmission, do not affect the 
general trustworthiness of the narrative ; and the freest acknowledg- 
ment of them in no way precludes the full belief in the inspiration 
of the Scriptures." 

In view of instances like this. Dr. J. R. Thompson says: 
"Chronology is peculiarly difficult when we have to do with 
Oriental modes of computation, which are essentially different from 
ours. ' ' 

2IO 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 



have been pointed out by men hospitable to objec- 
tions. But most reverent and thoughtful students, 
taking into view all the facts, will find their num- 
ber greatly reduced. Of these one, one only, is 
still to many a stumbling-block. Acts /: 14-16 
is held by some to be a statement clearly errone- 
ous on its face. But even if this solitary instance 
were utterly inexplicable, it would by no means 
follow that some missing factor may not yet be 
found, as in the case of other difficulties which 
vexed us half a century ago. To call in question 
the accuracy and inspiration of all the other books 
of the Bible because of a mistake which is possibly 
ours and not that of the Scripture, were certainly 
unjust. And even in this case, there may be 
found a solution, if we shall grant that the words 
are so evident and palpable a verbal inaccuracy as 
to stand out as such alike to the speaker and to 
those who heard him. For the speaker is thor- 
oughly familiar with the real facts as they lie on 
the face of the story in the Old Testament, and 
the hearers of Stephen knew them as well as he. 
He speaks freely, generally, without the idea that 
a single hearer will contradict him. He clearly 
speaks what they believe. And even if he had 
spoken erroneously, Luke, who records the speech, 
knew the facts of the biblical history. In some 
way or other the Old and the New stories must be 
harmonious to such persons. The greatness of the 
mistake shows that it can have no argumentative 
weight. In some familiarity of speech, generally 
accepted by the people of Stephen's time, he 
spoke; and in the same familiarity they heard. 

211 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

The chief inaccuracies alleged are (i) seventy- 
five persons are named, when only seventy are 
given in Genesis 46 : 27. There is a suggested 
explanation in the fact that Joseph may have 
*^ called for" seventy-five to go to Egypt, not 
knowing of the death of Jacob's wives and that of 
Judah's sons. So too, if the Septuagint was 
quoted by Stephen, it may have added the sons of 
Ephraim and Manasseh. The number " called 
for " in one narrative and the number that actually 
*'went down into Egypt" are respectively seventy- 
five and seventy. Each writer tells of the same 
transaction viewed from the standpoint of differing 
years. So seen, the discrepancy becomes a con- 
firmation. The more of such ^^ mistakes " the better 
when we see the seventeen years and the changed 
facts which intervene. Says another : *' The idea 
of mistake is excluded by the fact that both num- 
bers, seventy and seventy-five, were known to the 
Jews. Philo mentions them and moralizes accord- 
ing to his fashion on both the numbers. The 
Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old 
Testament made between 300 and 250 b. c.) 
gives the number seventy-five in Genesis 46 : 2J, 
where the Hebrew speaks of seventy. This 
number the Greek translators have made up by 
adding, in verse 20, to the sons of Joseph, grand- 
children and great grandchildren to the number of 
five, thus making the whole seventy-five instead of 
seventy. Now, why should they change the num- 
ber in the Hebrew original } And why, having 
changed it, should they mass the descendants of 
Joseph together in this way } If they must alter, 

2T2 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

why not take Judah or Levi, the two tribes we 
might have expected to be specially favored ? The 
answer to this question solves our difficulty. 
There was evidently another and more usual reck- 
oning among the people than the number given in 
Genesis, and the Greek translators altered the 
reading to suit it. Seventy was the number when 
Jacob went down to Egypt. But seventeen years 
afterward, when he was dying, the great father of 
the race altered the arrangement of the tribes 
(See Gen. 48 : 5, 6.) 

*^The consequence of this new disposition of the 
tribes was that Manasseh and Ephraim were placed 
among the great fathers of the race ; and that, just 
as the immediate descendants of the other patri- 
archs who were living at the time of the going 
down into Egypt were numbered, so the descend- 
ants of Ephraim and Manasseh, alive at the time 
when Jacob gave them this inheritance, were also 
numbered and added to the previous seventy. 
These were five, and we are indebted to the Septu- 
agint for having preserved their names. Sev- 
enty-five in this way displaced in the traditions of 
Israel the seventy of the reckoning in Gen. 46 : 
27. 

^* The recollection of the honor done to Joseph 
was kept alive by God throughout the ages. The 
references to it in Scripture are frequent. In 
Psalm JJ \ 15, we read, ^Thou hast with thine arm 
redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and 
Joseph.' It will be noted how the sons of Joseph 
are set here alongside the sons of Jacob as form- 
ing the great assembly of the people of God. 

21^ 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

They are two bands, the one taking its place by 
descent, the other by grace. In i Chron. 5 : 1,2, 
we learn that Jacob's gift was the bestowal of a 
lapsed birthright. Reuben had lost it by his sin : 
^ his birthright was given unto the sons of Joseph, 
the son of Israel.' 

*^Now Stephen's argument necessarily led him to 
take the number which told especially of Joseph's 
triumph. The story of Joseph is a parallel to that 
of Jesus. He was rejected by his brethren, and 
yet, among those very brethren, this great place 
was at last accorded to him. This difficulty, there- 
fore, like many another, was an indication of the 
existence of a neglected truth ; and the supposed 
mistake is simply a proof of the clear and vivid 
thought by which that great speech of his is 
throughout inspired." V 

Another inaccuracy from the same speech is 
the alleged ^* burial of Jacob at Sychem, whereas 
in Gen. 49, it is said that he was buried at He- 
bron." But the words are in the plural, *'were 
carried over and laid" and the Revised version 
reads : " They " — the bones of the fathers — '' were 
carried over and laid." Nor is there anything in 
either Testament to the contrary. The carrying 
of the bones to Sychem is affirmed by Jewish tra- 
dition and was a matter of belief in the days of 
Stephen. 

Another alleged inaccuracy in the story is the 
substitution of the word Abraham for Jacob in the 
speech as given by Luke. But it must be re- 

^ Rev. J. Urquart, in "Preacher's Magazine," May, 1894. 

214 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

membered that the Jews of that age — witness also 
the respective and disagreeing genealogies in 
Matthew and Luke — were fond of giving their 
own well-known history in rapid sketches, in brief 
formulas, in which, as in the tables of genealogy, 
events were quoted in series of equal numbers. 
An ancestor, sometimes remote, gives name to 
what was done by descendants. This method of 
speaking, which causes us a difficulty, was nothing 
of the sort to that age, when the Jews were re- 
hearsing the well-known national history. Dr. 
Hackett names the theory of Davidson that there 
was a verbal error in Stephen's speech, which the 
accurate Luke perpetuates, though knowing it to 
be such, so intent is he in recording exactly what 
Stephen did say on that occasion. " It is, how- 
ever,'' says Hackett, '* difficult to resist the impres- 
sion that a single word of the present text is 
wrong." In such a case, those described by Dr. 
E. G. Robinson as ^^over-anxious to recognize 
what they call ignorance or prejudice on the part 
of the writers of the Scriptures," have their choice 
instance. But thousands of careful and scholarly 
men would rather see here, as in the text of 
other ancient authors, an error by some copyist in 
transcribing the book — an error which faithful 
care on the part of subsequent transcribers has 
continued, because they have not dared to tamper 
with an inspired text. Whatever of difficulty 
exists in this single instance — and it is the most 
conspicuous and least explicable of any — it should 
not be allowed to throw any shadow over other 
parts of the Scriptures. Can there be any real 

215 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

shadow in the case of a man who is dying, and 
who is ''filled with the Holy Ghost"? Certainly 
the trend of a divine inspiration is in Stephen. 
He is, if we must grant it, half oblivious to mathe- 
matical accuracy; but his great overmastering 
thought in his address is that some seventy or 
seventy-five souls have increased to an immense 
number, and out of them Christ has come; that 
Joseph's seed has produced Jesus; that the ante- 
type has had its fulfillment in the '' Holy and Just 
One," of whom the Jews ''are the betrayers and 
murderers." His discourse is full of the trend of 
things. He sees the Holy Ghost as guiding events 
and men. He claims a divine ordering of events 
from first to last in the sketch of Hebrew history 
which he gives his auditors that day. 

About these various readings it may well be 
claimed that we are not at the end of our difficul- 
ties, and claimed, just as fully. 
Section III. ^j^.^ jj^ ^j^^-^ 3^^^ ^YiQYQ are 

Various Readings ^.^^^ ^^^^^^j^^ confirmations. 

In Westcott and Hort's introduction to " The 
New Testament in the Original Greek/' Vol. II., 
pages 2 and 3, we read : 

With regard to the great bulk of the words of the New 
Testament, as of other ancient \^Titings, there is no varia- 
tion or other ground of doubt. The same may be said with 
substantial truth of those various readings which never have 
been received, and in all probability never will be received, 
into any printed text. The proportion of words virtually 
accepted on all hands is not less than seven-eighths of the 
whole. The remaining eighth, therefore, formed in great 
part by changes of order and comparative triviality, con- 

216 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

stitutes the whole area of criticism. Setting aside difficul- 
ties in spelling, they make up one-sixtieth of the whole New 
Testament. Setting aside the comparatively trivial varia- 
tions in this last estimate, the substantial variations can 
hardly be more than a thousandth part of the entire text 
An exaggerated impression prevails as to the extent of pos- 
sible textual corruption ; and we desire to make it clearly 
understood how much of the New Testament stands in no 
need of a " textual critic' s ' ' labors. 

Of course no inspiration is claimed for the very- 
many transcribers who have undertaken to copy 
the original manuscripts, nor for those who copied 
from copies. No inspiration is claimed for printers 
of modern editions of the Bible. An instance of 
absolutely perfect printing in the case of so large 
a book as the Bible is unknown. Some error of 
spelling or punctuation, some mistake of word for 
word, or of letter for letter in numerals, is sure to 
be made. Even in the photographic processes of 
securing reprints of English books for American 
publishers, the slight angle of difference has ob- 
scured and obliterated some words. Those familiar 
with such subjects laugh at the alarm felt by others 
who have never examined this class of facts. Says 
President Hopkins : '^ By all the omissions and all 
the additions contained in all the manuscripts no 
fact is rendered obscure or doubtful." Says Bent- 
ley : '^ By none of these variations, etc., shall one 
be able to extinguish the light of a chapter or so 
disguise Christianity but that every feature of it 
will be the same.'' Says Maury: ^' In my investi- 
gations of natural phenomena when I can meet 
anything in the Bible it affords me a firm platform 
on which to stand." 

217 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

The unintelligibleness of the Bible is frequently 

alleged. It seems to be assumed that if the Bible 

is to make the truth clear, every 

TT .^f^.V-^^-^^* part of it should be easily un- 

Unmtelligibleness ^^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^.^^ 

arises at once, ^* By whom should every part of it 
be understood ? " Surely a man who comes to it 
with scanty knowledge of history, will not by 
opening the Bible at any place, become a fair judge 
about a historic allusion. Surely one may not de- 
mand that the Bible shall be so plain in every state- 
ment that no man shall ever make a mistake about 
it. That would be to demand a miracle in the case 
of every person of the race as he opens this book. 
How can a book that runs through the centuries, 
and is the production of men most subtile as 
philosophers, most imaginative as poets, most 
gifted as prophets, most logical as reasoners — 
how can such a book be intelligible, at the outset, 
to every reader ? All things in it are not equally 
evident even to men of ordinary intelligence. 
Certain fundamental truths stand out clearly. 
Duty demanded by the claims of God is obvious, 
even to a child. He can see the way into the 
kingdom of God. 

But the book is also for those beyond childhood, 
and beyond '^ordinary intelligence." Progressive 
is the revelation in the book, and progressive is to 
be our understanding of it. Only in subsequent 
ages can much in the Bible become intelligible to 
the most earnest students and the most spiritual 
men. The book can only be fully understood when 
the history of the race on earth is completed and 

2X8 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

surveyed from the heights of glory. Many a man 
has texts laid by for the coming life ; truths be- 
lieved on abundant testimony, but only partially 
understood and awaiting the clearer light of the 
unveiled countenance of God. The book goes 
beyond this world. It is known now only in its 
beginnings. So that the mysteries are to a certain 
degree the proofs, and the gradual unveiling here 
indicates that it is a book that will bear the search- 
ing light of an eternity with God. Intelligible on 
some practical points, its very unintelligibility on 
others shows the inbreathing of God. The book 
of earth, it is the book of heaven. It foretells 
disclosures. The known makes us .welcome the 
unknown, because the unknown is to be the known. 
Alike by what it reveals and by what it conceals 
we mark the inspiring trend. 

A large number of prophecies in the Old Testa- 
ment, especially of those relating to the coming of 
Christ, have not been fulfilled. 
Our Lord did not come in any ■fT^f^Vl?li'^* 
such majesty as was there de- p h 

picted. He was owned as Lord ^ ^ 

only by a very few persons and never by the Hebrew 
State. His dominion was not so extensive as therein 
declared. That he fulfilled some predictions is clear. 
And these predictions became actual history not 
only in their general spirit, but many of them were 
very minutely accomplished. The prophecies re- 
lated to such matters as his bones, as when it was 
said, " Not a bone of him shall be broken'' ; to his 
dress, as when it was said of it, '' Upon my vesture 

219 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

did they cast lots.'* It would sometimes seem as 
though the evangelists dwelt more on the great 
number of minute and verbal prophecies having a 
strictly literal fulfillment, than upon the general 
scope and tone of prophetic revelation, on which 
we to-day place so much stress. And this minute- 
ness of prediction has been urged as strong objec- 
tion to the biblical inspiration. The unfulfilled 
portions of these prophecies are so many that all 
of them have been called by an objector, *^ random 
predictions, some of which were sure of fulfillment, 
while others have completely failed." 

But some of these prophecies are as broad as 
the whole future history of the world. They can- 
not yet be fulfilled. But those prophecies which 
have already become history are but the first-fruits 
and so are the earnest of those which await fulfill- 
ment. 

We are living in a time when so much has been 
made of the alleged ^^ prophecies," meaning thereby 
the strange guesses some have ventured on the ob- 
scure Book of Revelation, that there is a wide- 
spread reaction ; and the exact and the literal ful- 
fillment of Old Testament prophecy is liable to be 
received with some degree of discount. We are 
finding the whole Old Testament generally pre- 
dictive rather than its separate verses especially 
prophetic. We are putting emphasis — not too 
much, but too exclusively — on the prophetic tone 
of every part of the older Scriptures. 

But surely the directly prophetic words about 
the old cities of the Bible, relating as they do to 
the minutest things, are not to be set aside. The 

. 220 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

argument from fulfilled prophecy is to some minds 
the strongest proof they have of the inspiration of 
the Bible. Some men are so made as to look no 
further for evidence, when once they have seen the 
fulfillment of the very word of ancient prophecy. 

God said, ^^ I will utterly destroy the tongue of 
the Egyptian Sea." And Goshen once fruitful 
and beautiful has seen centuries of sterility, so that 
not a town or city was found upon it until the 
Suez canal was dug ; and students of Egyptology 
have seen with amazement the exact and literal 
fulfillment of this prophecy. So too, the whole 
long series of prophecies about Noph, or Memphis, 
is distinguished for minuteness of detail. " Noph 
shall be without an inhabitant," said the prophet. 
It was a royal city, embracing a circuit of fifteen 
miles, the center of luxury, the pride of Egypt, 
But to-day not a human being resides in Noph. 
*^ Noph shall be desolate," said the prophet. Not 
a building stands in Noph. And while from their 
ruins the temples of Thebes, the other capital, can 
be restored on paper, any such restoration is im- 
possible for Memphis. '' Noph shall be laid waste," 
said the prophet again ; tracing thus the successive 
stages of her overthrow. ^^You will walk," says 
another, " for miles through layers of bones and 
skulls and mummy swathings." Where once were 
fruitful gardens, the desert sands have invaded the 
soil and laid all waste. And yet, close by, the soil 
is grandly fertile in contrast with wasted Noph. 

God said of Egypt as a whole, '^ I will lay her 
waste by the hands of strangers." There came 
speedily "the stranger." First, Nebuchadnezzar, 

221 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

with his Babylonians ; then the Persians ; then 
the Greeks ; then the Romans. Then came the 
hordes of Constantinople ; then the years of the 
Saracens ; then the Mamelukes ; then the Turks ; 
then in modern days, the French ; then the Eng- 
lish *^ stranger," the whole land being virtually 
mortgaged to Great Britain to-day for the payment 
of the ''Egyptian Bonds." And God said, ''there 
shall be no more a prince from the land of Egypt." 
From a date older than authentic history, always a 
"prince"; from the time of the Persian conquest, 
never an Egyptian prince has ruled Egypt. But 
when the prophetic words were said the ruling 
dynasty of Egypt was the most ancient and stable 
on the earth. 

There is the same startling minuteness in the 
special and peculiar- predictions about Babylon. 
The successive steps of the sieges and the widely 
different methods to be employed by the conquer- 
ors of ancient Tyre are another marvel. The fill- 
ing up of the strait between the island and the 
mainland, the failures at one point, the success at 
another during the final siege, are all predicted. 
So too, it is with those prophecies concerning 
Jerusalem as a city and Palestine as a land. They 
are almost microscopic in their detail. They read 
like history, though uttered in some cases centuries 
before the fulfillment. "What is the strongest 
proof of the Bible ? " said Frederick the Great to 
a courtier. " Sire, the Jews," was the instant 
reply. There is a series of prophecies concerning 
Amalek, Nineveh, Babylon, Sidon, the Moabites, 
the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Chaldean mon- 

222 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

archy, the Macedonian empire, and the Roman 
power. Often the things predicted are circum- 
stances so unique as to be utterly beyond an unin- 
spired ken. And the predictions about Christ, so 
varied, so peculiar, so minute and yet so broad, 
covering the scenes of his career from the manger 
to the ascension, are as far as possible from *' for- 
tunate guesses and general statements." The 
Gospel writers point out a very large number of 
these most unlikely fulfillments ; and the intelli- 
gent reader finds additional instances constantly 
occurring to him as he peruses their glowing 
words. 

But one of the most remarkable things about 
the gospel story is the presentation it gives us of 
Christ as the interpreter of prophecy. He was 
himself a prophet, but he is shown also as both 
endorser and interpreter of the Old Testament 
prophecies. Those who would find in prophecy 
only forecast, by the most general forms of lan- 
guage, of coming events, must stand rebuked be- 
fore Christ's use of prophetic Scripture. He in- 
terprets it with a startling minuteness, not once or 
twice but continuously. Take the one subject of 
his resurrection. He refers to it frequently as a 
thing of prophecy. '^Thus it is written" is his 
formula. He speaks of the slowness of heart in 
his disciples to believe ^' all that the prophets have 
written " on the theme of his resurrection. All 
this was ^*done according to the Scriptures," i. e.^ 
the Old Testament. He was, he said, ''the stone 
which the builders rejected," as foretold by the 
psalmist. These things are '' written by the proph- 

223 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

ets concerning the Son/' The Holy Ghost, by 
the prophets, had '' testified beforehand the suffer- 
ings of Christ and the glory that should follow.'* 
Jesus said of himself, '' the third day he shall rise 
again"; ** Thus it is written and thus it behoved 
Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the 
third day." The ^^thus it is written" is the proph- 
ecy in Hosea 6:2: '^ After two day will he revive 
us ; in the third day he will raise us up." There 
was a near fulfillment. But after that near fulfill- 
ment, our Lord quotes the words as a prophecy of 
his resurrection. Here it is not ^^ general tone" 
nor ^^ mere sound of similar words," but an actual 
prophecy concerning a circumstance that only the 
Holy Spirit could have foretold. Jesus uses the 
prophecy about *^ three days " so often that his 
enemies used it to point a sneer, when he was 
dead. They say, *^ We remember that while that 
deceiver was yet alive he said. After three days, I 
will rise again." 

As with Christ's interpretation of prophecy, so 
it is with those given us by the apostles. In 
pointing out the fulfillment of minute prophecies 
they are especially earnest ; and so they are our 
warrant in expecting direct and minute fulfillment 
of those that await accomplishment. Only let 
it be noted that these prophecies, the fulfillment 
of which was claimed by our Lord and his apos- 
tles, were not the vague statements of shrewd 
men venturing upon the possible contingencies in 
human affairs. The words are too definite, the 
predictions too careful, the details too many and 
unlikely, the circumstantial descriptions too exact 

224 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

for anything like that. God must have inspired 
these men to the extent of giving them a knowl- 
edge that no shrewdness or foresight could pos- 
sibly furnish. Sometimes they did not themselves 
know all the meanings in their ow^n predictions. 
They searched to find out what the inspiring Spirit 
really meant when it testified to a suffering Christ 
and the glory that should follow. In such cases 
God must have directed the word that carried in it 
reaches of divine thought greater than the writers 
knew. Other forms and degrees of care and 
superintendence might elsewhere suffice ; but in 
the case of minute, far-reaching, and altogether 
unlikely prediction, a special inspiration must have 
been vouchsafed. And students of the facts 
which show the precise fulfillment of the most 
literal words of the prophetic books stand some- 
times both delighted and amazed. They compare 
what God has wrought with what God has said. 
And they see in accomplished prophecy a nine- 
teenth-century proof of the accuracy, credibility, 
and inspiration of the Scriptures. 

These things being so, it cannot be said that 
those predictions not yet fulfilled are at all doubt- 
ful. The date is not yet ripe for some of them. 
''The fullness of time " is not yet come. God is 
not done with the world. The keystone is not 
yet set in the arch. 

Then too, the methods of prophecy are not those 
of history. Prophecy does not see chronological 
but moral order as the prominent thing. It is not 
history written beforehand. Events are connected 
less in time and more in character. Things that 
p 225 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

are alike are massed. In the same passage there 
is reference to events centuries apart. A babe 
born in the prophet's day is connected, in pro- 
phetic vision and word, with a babe to be born 
hundreds of years afterward at Bethlehem. A 
prediction of the first coming carries, in a sub- 
ordinate clause, a prediction of the second coming. 
A circumstance named in connection with a proph- 
ecy of the first advent is not fulfilled in the life 
of Jesus. It awaits his second advent. The two 
comings, utterly unlike in aim, as far apart as pos- 
sible in their circumstances, are yet alike in this 
one thing, they are the comings of the Christ. 
The prophetic eye sees both and predicts both in 
a single sentence. This would be a false method 
in history, but it is a true method in prophecy. 
And the objection that has been raised on this ac- 
count has simply shown a lack of knowledge of 
the real prophetic method. Let one get the point 
of view of the prophets, and the objections be- 
come confirmations. 

But there are those who look less at single 
prophecies and more at the prophetic trend of the 
whole Old Testament. Both views are correct ; 
nor does the specific invalidate the broader pro- 
phetic scope. It is equally unjust to slight either 
form of prophecy. There has been not a little 
unwise discussion whether the familiar phrase '^ in 
order that " means the exact fulfillment of specific 
v/ords, or is only an illustration of an underlying 
principle announced originally by a prophet, but 
pointed out by an evangelist. The two may well 
be blended. The grammatical construction un- 

226 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

doubtedly favors the former view. It looks, on 
the face of the Gospels, as if their writers so re- 
garded it. They attach sometimes great force to 
a single word in a long prophecy. And yet they 
occasionally quote the principle rather than the 
specific word. Oftener however the two views are 
blended. It makes the prophecy less mechanical 
and the fulfillment less artificial, if we recognize 
the underlying principle. God is always prophe- 
sying in the Old Testament. The whole history 
of the mediating people is inspired. There are 
everywhere prophetic events, some very striking, 
some mainly of worth as showing the trend. There 
were constantly prophetic men ; each exemplifying 
some one great virtue preparatory to the final ad- 
vent of the Lord. So in the summer time you 
shall find an artist drawing here a tree, sketching 
there a mountain, giving now the course of some 
meadow brook, and then the outline of some lovely 
lake. He calls them '^studies." He means by 
and by to assemble them all in the famous picture 
to be painted in the winter studio. So it is that 
in the Bible God gives us these prophetic events, 
prophetic men, prophetic rites, prophetic develop- 
ments. They are studies toward the grand por- 
traiture. The primal sin introduces the primal 
promise which gives token of the Calvary sorrow 
and the resulting salvation. The strange appear- 
ance of the priestly Melchizedek, without enrolled 
father or mother, who is not born and does not 
die on the pages of the record, is prophetic of the 
Christ who is the perpetual High Priest. So it is 
everywhere and with everything. Not an event is 

227 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

there that is not morally predictive. The exodus 
and the entrance, the captain appearing to Joshua, 
the strange episodes of the judges, the prosperous 
kingdom under Saul, David, and Solomon, the 
stormy days of political struggle with its humilia- 
tions and its salvations, the great captivity and the 
wonderful return — all of it is in the unmistakable 
trend, all of it is inspired history craving inspired 
record. 

But the golden thread on which all the events 
are strung is that of Messianic prophecy. No 
other nation had such an inspiring thought as 
thrilled the Hebrews. One wonders that poetry, 
outside the Hebrew bards, did not dream of such 
a One. The king of a spiritual kingdom, the Christ 
anointed of God, the suffering Servant who is the 
appointed Saviour — all these are the various forms 
of the great idea that runs through the Old Testa- 
ment. It is the union of a thousand separate 
threads woven into one firm fabric. All saviours 
from Israel's foes point to ^^the Saviour" ; all sal- 
vation the '^ great Salvation"; all deliverers fore- 
tell "the Deliverer." A great thought is palpitat- 
ing through the record and giving it its due form 
and its peculiar expression. The trend never 
turns aside. Steadily it grows in strength. It 
unifies all diversities. It is the great character- 
istic. It separates this literature to an immeas- 
urable distance from all other national writings. 
All prophecies of every sort verge toward this 
Messianic fact. Not one of them is a deviation 
from this ultimate goal. The sunshine is stronger 
and stronger on the way in which all things run, 

228 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

and the prize at the end grows brighter as the cen- 
turies advance. Things are directed and the pro- 
cession moves more swiftly; but the line of 
direction never alters. The bent knows no bend- 
ing. There are eras of special revelation. The 
light gets stronger, now by steady increase and 
anon by sudden flashes. Sometimes the ^' word of 
the Lord was rare in those days'' ; sometimes there 
was '' open vision." Always there was guidance. 
As in nature, so in revelation, there is variation, 
but God never loses his type. The divine thought 
is evermore reappearing. Dr. Harper has said : 

That Israelitish history is unique ; that a nation was 
especially chosen by God from all the nations of the earth 
to do a work that should bless all the families of the earth ; 
that Israel was especially guided in every step of national 
history; that disaster was the direct messenger of God ; that 
prosperity was in the strictest sense the result of obedience 
to the divine command ; that Jehovah, not a national deity, 
but the creator of all the earth, was his guide, his rock, his 
redeemer ; that Israel' s legislation was direct from heaven ; 
that Israel' s prophets spoke the exact word of God — all this 
the poets and prophets and sages declare repeatedly and 
emphatically. The events of Hebrew history stand alone. 
God acted in them as he acted in no others. Israelitish 
history is in a peculiar sense divine. — ''Biblical Worlds'' 
Feb., i8gS' 

History shows continually recurring divine laws. 
These are the constant principles out of which 
come the facts. So that by massing the facts we 
reason backward to the laws, and reason forward 
to the events. The Bible thus becomes one open 
book of eternal principles. It takes up facts wide 
centuries apart and puts them side by side. In 

229 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

his Epistle to the Galatians Paul names the two 
sons of Abraham as answering to Sinai and to Jeru- 
salem. He says '* Hagar is Sinai." ''He who 
was of the bond-woman was born after the flesh ; 
but he who was born after the free woman was 
born after the Spirit. Which things are an alle- 
gory." The attempt to put mystical meaning on 
such words has misled some good expositors. Once 
let the idea be clearly perceived that the great 
typical thoughts of "law and gospel," "nature 
and grace," are always present in the Old Testa- 
ment history, and the "allegory" or instance, as 
Paul calls it, is simiply the recurrence in other 
forms of the everywhere present thought that girds 
all parts of the Holy Scriptures into one compacted 
dominating aim and impulse and inspiration. 

That the story of the Christian facts, even when 
reported by eye-witnesses, should be affected by 

the personal equation of the 

Section VI. writer, is what we might expect. 

of vfew^^ But what about the doctrinal 

teaching, the inner spiritual 

meaning of the facts ? Do the doctrinal writers 

of the New Testament draw conclusions not only 

diverse but opposed to each other ? If the logical 

deductions are not harmonious, is there not a 

blemish on the inspiration and would not this be 

an actual proof of non-inspiration ? 

The old conflict, so often alleged between Paul 
and James, is now relegated to the past. It is 
seen that Paul's doctrine of the justification of a 
sinner by faith is not inconsistent with the justifi- 

230 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

cation of a man's belief that he is a Christian as 
evidenced by his works. But so fierce was the 
contest over the alleged discrepancy that so good a 
man as Luther called James' epistle **an epistle of 
straw/' and denied it to be an inspired writing. 
It was, indeed, only the passing vehemence of an 
earnest soul that had discerned one truth, and for 
the moment mistook his island for the whole broad 
continent. But the vigor of the language shows 
what was thought of the alleged discrepancy of 
view between James and Paul. 

There has been developed of late a tendency to 
insist upon the difference between Paul and John. 
It would seem that some who dislike the doctrine 
would pit the apostle of justice against the apostle 
of love. There is a disposition to speak of Paul 
as forensically narrow and John as the disciple 
more nearly presenting the broad heart of his Lord. 

There can be no doubt of the difference in the 
personality of the two men, and that this element 
comes out constantly in their epistles. Paul is 
a logician. He reasons. John never reasons, save 
with his heart. You can trace Paul's thought 
and find out why he says the next thing. John's 
connection of thought is simply a connection 
of feeling. Paul is doctrinal ; John experimicntal. 
Paul is looking toward an end ; John is the ideal- 
ist who cares not for any related truth, nor 
where his idealism may lead him. Paul asks 
why a thing is done and how it is done ; John 
seizes on the thing as done already. The idea of 
high solemn justice met and blended with com- 
passion, and both manifested in Christ, dominates 

231 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Paul's thought, while the idea of God as light and 
love is regnant in the heart of John. Salvation is 
secured, in Paul's conception, through believing 
on Christ and so obtaining remission of sins and 
the witnessing Spirit. In John's idea, salvation 
comes from walking in the light and in fellowship 
with God, whose love is shown in giving Christ to 
be the propitiation for our sins. Men will always 
differ as to which is the root idea. Some will see 
the substantial unity of the two views. ^ 

One asserts the atonement ; the other assumes 
it. One has a certain systematic completeness ; 
the other revels in the joyousness of truth, care- 
less of all formal statement. We may not say 
that Paul was all brain and John all heart. For 
Paul's logic was often on fire with love, and John's 
love often sees clearly that we must be practical in 
our love to man as well as fervent in our love to 
God. The redeeming Christ, seen by the one on 
his cross, is seen by the other as the '* Lamb of 
God" whose death is a '' propitiation for the sins 
of the world." There is not a doctrine of Paul 
that has not an ample and direct recognition as a 
principle of life in John. And while the absolute 
artlessness of the latter contrasts strangely with 

^ This whole theme is thoroughly discussed in the able work of 
Dr. George B. Stevens, entitled "The Johannine Theology." 
The scope is so broad and the treatment so exhaustive that the 
book must remain a standard volume on this matter. The " Bib- 
lical World, " March, 1894, contains an article by Dr. Stevens, 
giving an epitome of the views presented in the book above 
named, in which he shows that on the subjects of "The Idea of 
God," "The Person of Christ," "The Work of Christ," "The 
Doctrine of Sin," and the "Method of Salvation," there is no 
discrepancy between the two apostles. 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

the systematic form of Pauline statement, the 
trend is the same. The truth of Ufe through 
Christ alone, of salvation by divine grace through 
a faith that issues in affectionate obedience, throbs 
through them both. The direction in which both 
move is the same and they are animated at every 
step by the same blessed Holy Spirit of God. 
The discrepancy is only of the surface. The in- 
spiring trend is one. The forensic conception of 
salvation in Paul's epistles, the sacrificial concep- 
tion in John, and the practical conception of the 
result of all the other conceptions as seen in 
James, are just so many different developments of 
the same great truth founded on the same great 
facts. The unity in the diversity shows the one 
ever-present trend of divine inspiration working 
through human facts, human hearts, and human 
words. 

A few of these were alleged a quarter of a cen- 
tury ago. They arose from our imperfect knowl- 
edge of Egyptian and Babylo- 
nian history, chronoloery, and _ Section VII.^ 

inscriptions' They areYeldom ^"Tr^^nS?. "'"• 

mentioned to-day. But there 
is among those familiar with the mythology of the 
Greek and Roman writers a kind of suspicion. 
The older stories of the classic authors read in 
the college courses have made many persons not 
precisely distrustful, but at least willing to hear 
what can be said about the difference between 
Hebrew story and the Greek or Roman myth. 
Happily the better geographical and topographical 

233 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

researches of our time have done not a Uttle to 
reassure any hesitating faith. For not only is 
there a vast multitude of agreeing and confirma- 
tory testimony, as gathered by such men as Raw- 
linson ^ and others, showing the whole tone and 
coloring of the scriptural events to be in agreement 
with all we know of the alleged times and places 
where these events took place, but the whole 
mythological idea of the classic writers of the old 
Greek and Roman world is shown to sit so lightly 
on the hills and mountains, rivers and plains of the 
classic lands, that the myth can be disengaged and 
every scrap of history remain, while the Scripture 
events are part and parcel of Palestinian history 
and topography. 

The landscapes of Greece would not be altered 
in the least by leaving out every line of Greek 
mythology. The supernatural could be blown off 
as a cloud from the surface of the earth, and every 
fact of history would be the same. Those legends 
were never attached save in the loosest and slen- 
derest way to any locality. The Grecian myth 
had never an hour's serious belief even in the 
minds of those who used it in poetic license or in 
popular declamation. It was like our St. Nicholas 
and Santa Glaus. It did well enough as the pad- 
ding for polite literature among an imaginative 
people. They liked the beauty of the conception. 
It helped artist and singer and orator. It was 
never real to the people. It was a disembodied 
ghost. It had no time or place ; no form, save in 

^ "Egj^t and Babylon," by George Rawlinson. 
234 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

fancy ; no power, save as a pleasant fiction used to 
charm a weary hour. It never dreamed of afford- 
ing proof from eye-witnesses. All was wrapped 
in mist. All was seen in haze. All was unreal, 
shadowy, evanescent. There was no locality, no 
basis of topography. No one said that these 
things must needs have been, Greece being what 
she was in her geographical position and her au- 
thentic history. You can lift off the legend, and 
the land is there. You can dissipate the mist, and 
that fair and famous old Athens is just the same. 

But these gospel facts have historic and topo- 
graphical anchorage. They occurred in the most 
critical age the world ever saw. Neither has 
geometry nor the science of evidence advanced a 
hair's breadth since that time. These facts oc- 
curred not in any obscure land, but in a country 
that fronted all three of the continents of the 
known world of that time, the most prominent 
and coveted portion of the earth. They occurred 
at Capernaum in the center of a dense population, 
and at Jerusalem, the chief literary city ; also in 
the hill-country of Bethlehem and the upland 
towns of Galilee, all in the space of some forty 
miles, where men of extensive learning abounded 
and the Greek language and the Roman law pre- 
vailed. The supernatural of Palestine, exactly 
unlike that of Greece, is a veritable part of the 
history of the country itself. The facts are bound 
up with the land. The history and topography 
are blended in one common unity. 

Says Professor Sayce, in the '* Expository Times," 
December, 1891 : 

235 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

There are numerous cases in which the discoveries of the 
last few years have re-established the credit of the Old 
Testament and dissipated the ingenious objections raised 
against them. Assyriology, Egyptology, prehistoic archaeol- 
ogy, even explorations in southern Arabia and Asia Minor, 
have alike been contributing to this result. . . The second 
half of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, that which 
recounts the meeting between Abram and Melchizedek, 
has also received a remarkable confirmation from the 
clay records of the past. It is from the tablets of Tel el- 
Amarna that the light in this instance has been derived. 
The confirmation thus unexpectedly afforded of the histori- 
cal trustworthiness of the two narratives in the fourteenth 
chapter of Genesis opens up a still larger question. It 
shows that underneath the narratives of Genesis lie his- 
torical documents which come down from the age of the 
events which they record, and possess accordingly all the 
value of contemporaneous evidence. Whatever may have 
been the period when the book was compiled, its author or 
authors made use of written materials, and these written 
materials were as historically trustworthy as those on which 
we base our knowledge of the Persian wars with Greece. 
The history of Canaan before the Israelitish conquest was 
not a blank to be filled up by the legends and systematizing 
fictions of a later day. It belongs to a period when read- 
ing and writing were widely known and practised, and 
when contemporaneous events were recorded in imperish- 
able clay. 

Rawlinson, quoting the story of Abraham's visit 
to Egypt as recorded in Genesis 12 : 10-20, calls 
attention to particular after particular therein 
enumerated, and shows how each was matched in 
^'secular history." Egypt is a monarchy. Egypt 
has princes under a monarchy with specific duties ; 
the names of the monarch, Pharaoh, *^the Great 
House," and those of officers, who are to report the 
coming of any body of foreigners into the king- 

236 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

dom, being given. In one division of Egypt for- 
age abounds. Domesticated animals named in the 
story in Genesis are exactly those found at that 
time in Egypt ; but the horse is apparently in that 
age unknown. These notices of the Scripture 
clearly show the sort of civilization then existing 
in that land. Rawlinson also quotes Gen. 39 : 2- 
20; and then shows ^'that this picture is in re- 
markable harmony with the general tone of Egyp- 
tian manners and customs." A large number of 
these special instances of this harmony are given 
by him. It is the same with Joseph's time ; cus- 
toms then named having been unknown in Abra- 
ham's day. Precisely the same thing has been 
shown by Rawlinson in his ''Notices of Egypt in 
Exodus and Numbers"; also in Kings and the 
earlier prophetic writing. Each book has its set- 
ting in the customs of its own time, in contempo- 
rary manners and in historic facts. 

These books are not historic novelettes, for " the 
spade" has shown the proofs of historicity. Light 
came in as to these contemporary facts and historic 
confirmations, first, from the annals of Sargon, by 
which we have the record of expeditions of Baby- 
lonian kings who had lived and reigned long before 
the time of Abraham. Sayce insists that " for the 
archaeologist, the Pentateuch is rooted in the Mo- 
saic age." Conder, of the Exploration Fund, tells 
us that '' things that could not be said three years 
ago can be said now about the ancient civilizations 
and their remarkable agreement, topographically, 
with the Bible story." We have learned that the 
old cultures of Egypt, of Assyria, and even of the 

237 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Palestinian peoples, were vastly in advance of what 
had been believed ; that the old world of Abraham 
and Jacob and Joseph and Moses was a world of 
books and libraries ; that men were capable of re- 
cording historic facts with accuracy; that kings 
employed scribes to do this thing ; that there was 
even international correspondence in clay letters 
between the people on the banks of the Euphrates, 
the Jordan, and the Nile. It has been claimed 
that historic material as worthy of credence was 
furnished three thousand years ago as that given 
us within the last three hundred years for what we 
call modern history.^ 

If a stable government, organized institutions, 
developed art and papyri preserved in ancient 
tombs, now as legible as when first written four 
thousand — some claim five thousand — years ago ; if 
tablets of clay hardened into imperishable stone 
can furnish a basis of historic facts ; and if the his- 
toric faculty existed, as shown by the oldest Egyp- 
tian book — and all this has been proved — then we 
have the opportunity newly furnished to our age 
for comparing sacred and secular history in their 
tone and spirit, in their recorded customs and their 
whole mode of thought, feeling, and action. And 
the correspondences are multiplying. The few 
minor discrepancies — one hardly knows how to 
state them, they are so few — vanish before the ac- 

^ ** That the art of writing, and with it historical and other litera- 
ture, came with the earliest Eg}-ptian colonists there seems no rea- 
son to doubt. The oldest monuments show it in as great perfec- 
tion as at any subsequent date.'' DawsQQ, "Egypt and Sinai/' 
pp. 159, 160. 

238 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

cumulated light of unintentional agreements and 
correspondences. The book is of God, as well as 
of man. It is everywhere dominated by a trend 
that is historical as well as religious. One thought 
from one Mind rules it from first to last. 

The alleged savagery of the Old Testament has 
been repeatedly urged as a blot upon an inspired 
book. About this sanguinary 
element some things are to .,, ^^i^^ '^^^^^ 
be said frankly. It is (i) ap- ^^^'^'^ ^^^^Sery 
parent in the record, and we find it sometimes in 
the sayings of good men. One meets conspicuous 
instances of it in the Psalms. So too, (2) this vin- 
dictiveness in the story comes sometimes from the 
fact that these bloody wars were religious wars 
waged against the Jehovah religion for its exclusive 
character. Good men had to be slaughtered or to 
resist by force of arms. Whatever may have been 
said later in New Testament times, no idea of non- 
resistance was found in the Old Testament, when 
Israel was attacked by her foes. So too, (3) these 
conspicuous facts of vindictiveness should have 
been accurately recorded if they actually existed. 
Nor is the Bible in its record of these wars any 
more to blame than is secular history for its record 
of other wars. And further, (4) the vindictiveness 
is often a form of intense opposition to the wrong. 
Some psalms can only be fitly read in war times. 
They have a different tone in such periods of 
national indignation at unrighteousness. There 
were hours during our late Civil War when men 
turned to these most terrible war cries, nor found 

239 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

them too strong to voice their moral wrath at the 
enemies of righteousness. But (5) there is a rea- 
son deeper than any other. David is usually 
reckoned as a chief offender. And there is a 
wide — an immensely wide chasm between the 
morality of the man and the religion of the man. 
Let us own this frankly. We are really amazed to 
find this man of tenderest soul, who in his most de- 
votional moods is leading the songs of the ages, so 
sadly wrong in conduct and so vindictive in spirit. 
Men who are opposed to the book say, ^^ Well, here 
is your ^man after God's own heart,' and he is re- 
ligious enough toward God, but he is wicked 
enough toward men." These are the facts — a very 
spiritual man, as shown in his holy songs, and a 
wicked man at times, as shown in his conduct. 
We do well to make some abatement by showing 
that his wickedness was succeeded by a ^'return to 
God." But we shall find it hard to be severe 
upon him when we see him moaning and sobbing 
out his penitence before God in his fifty-first Psalm. 
One must be hard-hearted and of bitter and vin- 
dictive judgment himself, who can see him on his 
knees in confession and not consider this fact of 
his great penitence. 

But all this extenuation may be admitted and 
still there is left a sad record of vindictive deeds. 
Now let there be seen on the pages of sacred story 
the whole broad series of facts. God did select 
this man when he was plainly very imperfect. He 
did not take him as a man advanced in morality or 
practical holiness. He was a backward saint, at 
first, even by a low standard. In his best days he 

240 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

was not a specially advanced man in the human- 
ities. And yet he is especially forward in religion. 
Plainly then he is more than himself in his songs. 
He speaks for another and by that other's help. 
Only as we assume a direct, express, peculiar in- 
spiration of God's Holy Spirit, very far in advance 
of his personal character, can we understand him 
or his work. He is more than the weak man 
David. He has, indeed, natural poetic gifts. But 
he himself and his muse are taken up of God His 
inspiration is not measured by his religion. His 
own backwardness stands right over against his 
wonderful forwardness in spiritual song. He is 
inspired of God above the measure of his own 
moral, religious, and spiritual attainments. He is 
moved upon, in his song by a peculiar influence, 
raising him, in some respects, above himself. He 
sings as it were impossible he should sing other- 
wise than as influenced by the Holy Spirit. His 
inspiration is more than himself. This is the only 
explanation of David. He is proof and instance 
of what God can do in this direction for men who 
in their character are sadly fallible, when he will 
take and use them. They have what we must call 
a peculiar inspiration directly from God. And the 
man when thus moved, comes into the trend. He 
sings often New Testament songs before their 
time. He is more than David the man ; he is 
David the divinely inspired seer, the prophet of 
the Lord. It was a case of the fulfillment, before 
they were uttered, of Christ's words, " It shall not 
be ye that speak." In this case inspiration is ex- 
planation. 

Q 241 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

Arguing on the theory that inspiration is simply 
a form of personal religious utterance, and so is 

measured by each man's per- 
Section IX. sonal piety, some have asked 
Continuous Eeve- ^^ ^^^ /^^^ ^ 

tmuous, and men be as much 
inspired now as in former times. In his " Yale 
Lectures," Mr. R. F. Horton adopts this view, rep- 
resenting the preacher as receiving his message 
directly from God, exactly as did the ancient 
prophets. He claims ** a revelation that is as well 
as a revelation that was.'' On this ground revela- 
tion, in the sense of a continued Bible made up of 
experiences and revelations for the last nineteen 
hundred years, is to be consulted as is our Bible. 
So Schleiermacher is understood, in some of his 
utterances, to put no emphasis on biblical inspira- 
tion as a thing different from that which comes 
from the utterance of any Christian soul, in the 
speaking of the truth that may be perceived. 

There can be an instant ^' test of fact " in reply- 
ing to such a statement. Are the religious teach- 
ers of to-day comparable with the New Testament 
writers in divine inspiration ? Take the foremost 
books that have influenced men for the last two 
centuries. The most widely known religious book 
of the former century was Bunyan's ^'Pilgrim's 
Progress " ; the most widely read religious volumes 
of the last quarter of a century are ** Spurgeon's 
Sermons." Try these books by Mr. Horton's 
standard. Have they the same authoritativeness 
in tone ? Have they the evidence anywhere of 
the same inspiration as that of Paul and John ? 

242 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

How the authors of these modern books would 
have shrunk in holy horror from such a claim. 
They held the Bible to be inspired in a sense they 
never dared claim for their own productions. They 
did hold that the Holy Spirit illuminated their 
minds to see, feel, interpret, and present anew the 
truth found in the inspired word — a very different 
thing. 

So too, there is the test of the readers as well 
as of the writers. Do Christians feel that they are 
presented with the direct speech of God in these 
last-named books, as they do when they open their 
Bibles ? Surely ^' the test of Christian conscious- 
ness," to which such men as Mr. Horton and Mr. 
F. W. Robertson and those who intimate a ^* uni- 
versal divine inspiration among Christians " are 
wont to appeal so strongly, is against their view in 
this matter. 

No more is the claim exemplified in those who 
make it. It is not seen that they are more spir- 
itual as men, nor more divinely persuasive as 
teachers. They are not more conspicuously " filled 
with the Holy Ghost " than their brethren in the 
ministry. They always, when they come to the 
personal appeal, fail to put in this claim for them- 
selves. They shrink with all due modesty, as 
David and Isaiah and Paul and John did not. But 
the inspired prophets never shrank, never hesi- 
tated. They boldly laid claim to direct divine 
inspiration. That the '' Yale Lectures " do not 
show the same evidence of divine inspiration as do 
the Pastoral Epistles, is no reflection upon the 
Lectures. They are another kind of production, 

243 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

having many excellencies and much to commend 
them ; but they belong in another realm of litera- 
ture. They show the logical unsoundness of the 
main position they set themselves to defend. 
Bound up together with the Bible in the same 
volume, by sheer force of the bookmaker's art, 
there might be a demand for one edition, but no 
second edition would be printed. The testing in 
any way, of the position, shows its erroneousness. 
Let exposition of the sacred word be claimed for 
such human productions ; let them be regarded as 
contributions to a better understanding of human 
duty. But who does not shrink from calling them 
God's word ? 

Further ; not only do our human productions on 
religious themes fail to come up to the level of 
God's word, but they often differ from it. In that 
case, according to the theory of a continuous di- 
vine inspiration, which of them shall stand as the 
true word of God for us ? Coming later, derived 
from a purer piety, a larger knowledge, a higher 
tone of Christian morality than was possible to 
Christians in the apostolic age, the newer revela- 
tion will be the better of the two. The *^ modern 
Christian consciousness " considered as a Bible, 
will rightly supersede the former Bible. In that 
case we ought to read into it our newer, better 
convictions of what it should say, and of what it 
would say had it been written in our own century. 
Somebody once rewrote ^' Pilgrim's Progress," one 
of the most spiritual of books, in the interest of 
ritualism. And the moral scorn of the Christian 
world was only equaled by the literary scorn of 

244 



DIFFICULTIES AND CONFIRMATIONS 

foremost reviewers. To re-write the Bible in the 
interests of the theory of a ^' continuous inspiration 
like in kind to that of the biblical writers," would 
be a necessary but a terrible duty, from which 
none would shrink more heartily than some who 
have not duly considered the trend of their mis- 
taken position. 

There is no antecedent reason why the Old 
Testament should not stop at a given point, and 
none why the New Testament should not have a 
close. One might not beforehand say where a 
period should be put to either volume. But now 
that it has been done, we can mark the wisdom that 
began and ended the Bible. It is with revelation 
as it is in nature with the creation of man, the end 
everywhere typified is reached. Says Winchell : 
*^ The column of organic succession is complete in 
man. The lower forms, gradually and regularly 
ascending from base to summit, constitute the 
shaft of the column ; but in man we have a sudden 
expansion, an ornateness of finish, an incorporation 
of new ideas which designate him as the capital 
and completion of the grand column of organic 
existence. No further progress can be made in 
this direction." There is the fulfilhng of all 
former predictions of nature in man, the creature ; 
and similarly all prophecies of inspiration are ful- 
filled in the New Testament. It expects to be 
superseded by no other book. 

Careful study and reflection on the scope of the 
revelation God has given us show the rounded 

^^'Sketches of Creation," p. 377. 
245 



INSPIRATION CONSIDERED AS A TREND 

completion of the work undertaken. We praise 
God for what he has given. We might ask, in our 
merely curious moods, for more. Sometimes we 
long, in the progress of the undertaking, for a few 
words here and there to help us understand the 
Bible more completely. But our more sober 
thought is as glad over the silences as it is over 
the utterances of the Scriptures. The trend finds 
consummation. It brought us on to Christ; then 
on to his church as founded and directed by apos- 
tolic teaching. The apostles could have no suc- 
cessors. Verbal testimony as to a risen Christ by 
men appointed of God who saw him after his 
resurrection, must end with their death. But this 
ripe, rounded New Testament, they have left be- 
hind for us, claiming for it the fulfillment of their 
Master's promise, '^ He," i, e., the Holy Spirit, 
^^ shall lead you into all truth." These men fol- 
lowed out in their verbal and in their written story 
this promised leading, this divine trend ; and it is 
ours to mark this trend everywhere visible in their 
thought and deed and word. 



246 



INDEX 



Adam, created in righteousness 

and holiness, 102. 
Abraham : and coming Christ, 88 ; 

attempted offering of Isaac, 108. 
Age-spirit, danger from, 59. 
Alleged facts, either _true or im- 
moral, 23. 
Alleged errancy, 179. 
Antagonisms in argument to be 

avoided, 35. 
Anthropomorphism, 166, 206. 
Apostolic representations, 202. 
Approximations in all theories, 35. 
Apprehend, to, not to comprehend, 

40. 
Apostles not mentally or morally 

superior, 203. 
Assumptions : necessary in mathe- 
matics, 19 ; of outside world, 49 ; 

of inspiration of Bible by good 

men, 136. 
Argument for Divine existence 

and Divine inspiration similar. 

Introduction. 
Assyrian ante-Mosaic belief, 101. 
Athenian fancies, 235. 
Authorship: not always avowed, 

154; often assumed as known, 

155. 
Authentic documents needed, 28. 
Autobiography of Moses, 83. 
Axioms : in mathematics, 25 ; in 

logic, 46 ; in morals, 47. 

Balfour, quotation from, 138. 
Basis : in New Testament, 45 ; in 



I Old Testament, 46 ; in intuitions, 
47. 

Belief : in self, 48 ; in substance 
other than our bodies, 48; in 
other minds, 49 ; in the true and 
the false, 50 ; postures experi- 
ential, 118. 

Bengel, quotation from, 103. 

Bently, quotation from, 217. 

Bible : hold of on middle classes, 
14, 28 ; a growth, 72 ; bound to 
account for, 16; awakes moral 
convictions, 70 ; universal utter- 
ances of, 75 ; wide plan of, 139 ; 
completion of, 245 ; no one class 
addressed in, 14 ; of great value, 
71 ; a human book, 175. 

Biography as a method of history, 
82. 

Bruce, quotation from, 44, 60. 

Caiaphas, prophecy of, 197. 

Canonical books, 143. 

Capacity for being inspired, 117. 

Christ : endorsement of Old Testa- 
ment by, 163 ; his interpretation 
of prophecies, 223 ; his interpre- 
tation of the facts of the Old 
Testament in the New Dispen- 
sation, 110. 

Christian consciousness : argu- 
ment from, 123, 135 ; agreement 
of, with written word, 131. 

Christianity : exists, 45 ; connected 
with a book, 47. 

Chronological diflaculties : recog 
247 



248 



INDEX 



nized, 208 ; exist in other ancient 
books, 209. 

Coleridge's view of Old Testament, 
96. 

Contemporary Review, quotation 
from, 57. 

Conant, quotation from, 106. 

Contents of ^Christian conscious- 
ness, 115. 

Continuous inspiration, 133, 242. 

Co-partnership of Bible and hu- 
man intuitions, 175. 

Co-relation of fact and record, 174. 

Cross references of biblical writers, 
159. 

Davis, quotation from, 164. 
David's piety not the measure of 

his inspiration, 241. 
Daniel's prophetic mood, 196. 
Danger of technical studies, 49, 

129. 
Dawson, quotation from, 238. 
Deborah's song, 170. 
Deliverances and the Deliverer, 

171. 
Development of conception, 106 
Devotional use of Bible, 134. 
Difficulties in discarding the 

Bible, 17. 
Difficulties may be confirmations, 

206. 
Divine guidance in common 

events, 192. 
Dormant intuitions, 60. 
Dynamic theory, 32. 

Elements of truth in each theory, 

33. 
Eg^T)tian beliefs, 101. 
Enoch's prophecies, 103. 
Erasmus, quotation from, 136. 
Events : cumulative, 76 ; inspired 

record of, 33. 
Evidence, human certainty by, 

180. 



Existence, the Divine. Introduc- 
tion. 

Experimental religion : as to the 
Bible, 126 ; its methods of proof, 
123 ; its limitations, 124 ; its cer- 
tainties, 126 ; its coiTCctions, 133 ; 
its echo of biblical fact and doc- 
trine, 135. 

Eye, the vital, 34. 

Ezekiel's prophecies, 169. 

I Fair bairn, quotation from, 117, 

132. 
Farrar, quotation from, 87. 
Feeling, a fact to be recognized, 

125. 
Flowers concentrated sunshine, 

114. 
Final authority in religion, 141. 
Force, vital, 15. 
Futiure life: in historical books, 

103 ; in Pentateuch, 104 ; in 

prophets, 10-5. 

Garbett, quotation from, 199. 

Geographical exactness and inex- 
actness, 78. 

Genius: human, in Bible, 32; in 
plan of books, 96. 

God : argiunent for existence of. 
Introduction. Argument for, 
of trend, 39 ; necessitarian view 
of, 37; teleological view of, 38; 
as a logical being, 62 ; as a moral 
being, 63 ; arguments for, same 
as for inspiration, 40. 

Hackett, quotation from, 215. 
Hamilton, quotation from, 62. 
Harper, quotation from, 88, 114, 229. 
Hebrew race : foremost morally, 

21 ; historic existence of, 45. 
Hegelianism, 23. 
Historians: best are biographei*s, 

82 : necessarily prophetic, 



INDEX 



249 



though humanly so, 95 ; Mosaic 

method reviyed by, 97. 
Hitchcock, quotation from, 91. 
Holy Spirit : interpreter, 109 ; in- 

spirer, 150. 
Homeric methods of description, 

81. 
Homiletic use of Bible, 135. 
Horton, quotation from, 131. 
Hopkins, quotation from, 217. 

Importance of inquir^^, 13, 20. 

Increasing knowledge, 18.5. 

Induction as a method : defined, 
42 ; limitations of, 43 ; deduction 
not wholly separated from, 42; 
only probable conclusions 
reached by, 44. 

Influence of Bible, 14. 

Inerrancy, 182. 

Inspiration: burden of proof on 
opponents, described rather 
than defined, 29 ; of facts, 190 ; 
thrones of, 32 ; human, 34 ; en- 
dorsement of, by other inspired 
men, 157 ; various ways of con- 
sidering. Introduction; verbal, 
32. 

Interpretation (full) of Old Testa- 
ment only in New, 99. 

Intuition : corroborated by reason, 
56 ; trustworthy, 58. 

Investigators should be experi- 
mental Christians, 135. 

Judaism : exists, 45 ; connected 

with a book, 46. 
Judean topography, 236. 
Judgment day : intuitive belief in, 

54 ; also reasonable, 55. 

Kilpatrick, quotation from, 210. 

Kidd, quotation from in " Social 
Evolution," 58. 

Knowledge, human, not unreli- 
able, 44. 



Libraries, ancient, on stone and 

papyrus, 238. 
Life, to be described not defined, 

17. 
Life and immortality brought to 

light, 160. 
Literalness of biblical events, 100. 
Literary imperfection not moral 

error, 74. 
Literatui'e (human) the expected 

form of revelation, 151. 
Livingstone, quotation from, 57. 
Luther's view of James' Epistle, 

231. 

Maury, quotation from, 217, 

Material, literary-, in Palestine, 162. 

Maurice, quotation from, 23. 

Max Miiller, quotation from, 50. 

Measure of piety not that of in- 
spiration, 186, 203. 

Men free though inspired, 151. 

Methods : those to be used, 29 ; 
historical, 79 ; optical, 80. 

Mill: quotation from, on con- 
sciousness, 47 ; on induction, 
115. 

Miracle : not a buttress, but truth 
incarnate, 194 ; demand for, 75 ; 

Moral intuitions, 48-54. 

Morrison, quotation from, 58. 

Moses : method of in writing, 81 ; 
code of, 97 ; in wilderness, 34. 

Monotheistic idea always pre- 
served, 169. 

Multiplication table, 19. 

Mutual consistency of intuitions, 
62. 

Myer on Egyptian Archaeology, 
52. 

Names of scriptural writings, 203. 
Natural intuitions, 42. 
Noah's work, 103. 
Norms: in ten commandments, 
119 ; in regeneration as a condi- 



250 



INDEX 



tion of admission to kingdom, 
121. 

Old nations monotheistic, 50. 
Old Testament interpreted "by 

New, 93. 
Oral preaching by apostles, 142, 

203. 
Owen, George, quotation from, 57. 

Paul : Epistles of, 200 ; his excep- 
tions, 201. 

Pentateuchal history, 96. 

Perplexities, greater without in- 
spiration, 24. 

Plain men best witnesses, 18. 

Poetic quotations in Psalms, 171. 

Prayer to know the truth, 16. 

Premonitions of New Testament 
in Old, 101. 

Preservation of Bible, 186. 

Proctor's description of optical 
phenomena, 91. 

Post-exilic theory of Pentateuch, 
163. 

Prophecies : of Noph, 220 ; of Mem- 
phis, 221; of Babylon, 222; of 
Tjrre and Jerusalem, 223. 

Prophecy not history, 225. 

Prophets did not know all the 
meanings of their words, 224. 

Progress in doctrine, 168. 

Promises carry with them facts, 
121. 

Primitive beliefs: gone back to, 
46 ; trustworthy when reached, 
66. 

Rawlinson, quotation from, 56. 

Reading the New Testament with 
the Old, 113. 

Record of events unique, 89. 

Relation of the Old to New, 91. 

Rejection of inspiration, 26. 

Ren an : remarks of, 58 ; his mis- 
take, 162. 



Redemption : a fundamental idea 
of the world, 89 ; of single souls, 
90. 

Resurrection in Old Testament, 
105. 

Results, 21. 

Responsibility for reception or re- 
jection, 16. 

Revelation : the, 7 ; John's method 
in, 81. 

Robertson, quotation from, 172. 

Robinson, quotation from, 215. 

Sanguinary Psalms, 239. 
Sanity of biblical writers, 184. 
Sayce, quotation from, 235. 
Scenes, of facts and persons, 23. 
Schleiermacher, quotation from, 

87. 
Scriptures affectionately regarded, 

144. 
Search simplified by inspiration, 

25. 
Secular versus religious scholar- 
ship, 197. 
Self-knowledge not easy, 65. 
Semitic carelessness about dates, 

209. 
Shairp, quotation from, 80. 
i Smith, quotation from, 189. 
Stevens, quotation from, 232. 
Spiritual instincts, 16, 37. 
Spurgeon, quotations from, 183. 
Subjects that demand inspired 

record, 143. 
Symbols, in their New Testament 

interpretation, 112. 

Testimony of experience, 124. 

Theory, none absolutely consist- 
ent, 84. 

Theories : in their agreement, 30 ; 
parallel, 35 ; each theory ex- 
plains some things, 32 ; dynamic 
theory, 31; verbal theory, 33; 



INDEX 



251 



thought theory, 32 ; all to he 
recognized, 35 ; no one held con- 
sistently, 34. 
Trend : definition of, 29, 32 ; covers 
all theories, 33; traced every- 
where, 198, 199 ; in argument for 
God, 38; of the book, 31; of 
each view, 30 ; magnetic, 29 ; 
strength of, 246. 

Universal expectation of inspira- 
tion, 141. 

Uninspired Bible would hurt us 
rather than help, 24. 

Verification: of fact by experi- 



ence, 127 ; of one method by an- 
other, 129. 
Vital eye, 34. 

Warranted expectations, 152. 

Whateley's definition of induc- 
tion, 42. 

Wordsworth's poetical descrip- 
tions scientific, 80. 

Worth of experience in argument 
for others, 123. 

Winchell, quotation from, 245. 

Wrong conception of Bible: is 
vital wrong against self, 17 ; is 
against God, 18. 



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